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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://www.archive.org/details/civilwarnarrativ03ilfoot
The Civil War
A Narrative
ALL THESE WERE HONOURED IN THEIR GENERATIONS
AND WERE THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES
THERE BE OF THEM
THAT HAVE LEFT A NAME BEHIND THEM
THAT THEIR PRAISES MIGHT BE REPORTED
AND SOME THERE BE WHICH HAVE NO MEMORIAL
WHO ARE PERISHED AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN
AND ARE BECOME AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN BORN
AND THEIR CHILDREN AFTER THEM
BUT THESE WERE MERCIFUL MEN
WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS HATH NOT BEEN FORGOTTEN
WITH THEIR SEED SHALL CONTINUALLY REMAIN
A GOOD INHERITANCE
AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE WITHIN THE COVENANT
THEIR SEED STANDETH FAST
AND THEIR CHILDREN FOR THEIR SAKES
THEIR SEED SHALL REMAIN FOR EVER
AND THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT
THEIR BODIES ARE BURIED IN PEACE
BUT THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE
Ecclesiasticus xliv
THE
Civil War
zA ^Narrative
* •
FREDERICKSBURG
to MERIDIAN
* *
By SHELBY FOOTE
RANDOM HOUSE • NEW YORK
987654
© Copyright, 1963, by Shelby Foote
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and
simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada, Limited
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-9882
Manufactured in the United States of America
by H. Wolff, New York
V. 3
CONTENTS
• x #
I
1. The Longest Journey 3
2. Unhappy New Year 107
3. Death of a Soldier 221
11
4. The Beleaguered City 323
5. Stars in their Courses 428
6. Unvexed to the Sea 582
in
7. Riot and Resurgence 663
8. The Center Gives 769
9. Spring Came on Forever 870
List of Maps, Bibliographical
Note, and Index 967
*
I
*
The Longest Journey
* x *
"AFTER AN ABSENCE OF NEARLY TWO YEARS,"
Jefferson Davis told the legislators assembled under the golden dome
of his home-state capitol on the day after Christmas, 1862 — twenty
months and two weeks, to the day, since the guns of Charleston opened
fire on Sumter to inaugurate the civil war no one could know was not
yet halfway over — "I again find myself among those who, from the
days of my childhood, have ever been the trusted objects of my affection,
those for whose good I have ever striven and whose interests I have
sometimes hoped I may have contributed to subserve. ... I left you to
assume the duties which have devolved upon me as the representative of
the new Confederacy. The responsibilities of this position have occupied
all my time, and have left me no opportunity for mingling with my
friends in Mississippi or for sharing in the dangers which have menaced
them. But, wherever duty may have called me, my heart has been with
you, and the success of the cause in which we are all engaged has been
first in my thoughts and prayers."
In February of the year before, he had left for Montgomery, Ala-
bama, to assume his role as President of the newly established provisional
government, believing, as he said now, "that the service to which I was
called could be but temporary." A West Pointer and an authentic hero
of the Mexican War, he had considered his primary talent — or, as he
termed it, his "capacity" — to be military. He had thought to return to
the duty he found congenial, that of a line officer in the service of his
state, "to lead Mississippians in the field, and to be with them where dan-
ger was to be braved and glory won. . . . But it was decided differently.
I was called to another sphere of action. How, in that sphere, I have dis-
charged the duties and obligations imposed on me, it does not become me
to constitute myself the judge. It is for others to decide that question.
But, speaking to you with that frankness and that confidence with which
I have always spoken to you, and which partakes of the nature of think-
[ 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
ing aloud, I can say with my hand upon my heart that whatever I have
done has been done with the sincere purpose of promoting the noble
cause in which we are engaged. The period which has elapsed since I left
you is short; for the time which may appear long in the life of a man is
short in the history of a nation. And in that short period remarkable
changes have been wrought in all the circumstances by which we are sur-
rounded."
Remarkable changes had indeed been wrought, and of these the
most immediately striking to those present, seated row on row beneath
him or standing close-packed along the outer aisles, was in the aspect of
the man who stood before them, tall and slender, careworn and oracular,
in a mote-shot nimbus of hazy noonday sunlight pouring down from the
high windows of the hall. When they had seen him last on this same ros-
trum, just short of twenty- three months ago this week, he had not ap-
peared to be within a decade of his fifty-two years of age. Now, though,
he was fifty-four, and he looked it. The "troubles and thorns innumera-
ble" which he foretold on his arrival in Montgomery to take the oath of
office, back in the first glad springtime of the nation, had not only come
to pass; they had also left their marks — as if the thorns, being more than
figurative, had scored his brow and made of him what he had never
seemed before, a man of sorrows. The gray eyes, one lustrous, the other
sightless, its stone gray pupil covered by a film, were deeply sunken
above the jut of the high cheekbones, and the thin upper lip, indicative of
an iron will and rigid self-control, was held so tightly against the teeth,
even in repose, that you saw their shape behind it. The accustomed ge-
niality was there, the inveterate grace and charm of manner, along with
the rich music of the voice, but the symptoms of strain and overwork
were all too obvious. These proceeded, it was said, not only from having
had to await (as he was awaiting even now) the outcome of battles in
which he could have no active part, whatever his inclination, but also, it
was added, from a congenital inability to relegate authority, including
the minor paperwork which took up such a disproportionate share of his
existence.
Other changes there were, too, less physical and therefore less im-
mediately obvious, but on closer inspection no less profound. In this case,
moreover, the contrast between now and then was emphasized by mutu-
ality, involving others besides Davis. It was two-sided; reciprocal, so to
speak. Arriving in Jackson to accept his appointment as commander of
Mississippi troops after his farewell to the Senate in January of what had
presently turned out to be the first year of the conflict some men had
still believed could be avoided, he had been met at the station by Gover-
nor J.J. Pettus, whom he advised to push the procurement of arms. "We
shall need all and many more than we can get," he said, expressing the
conviction that blood would soon be shed. "General, you overrate the
risk," the governor protested, and Davis replied: "I only wish I did." So
The Longest Journey [ 5 ]
thoroughly had this prediction been fulfilled in the past twenty months —
Kentucky and Missouri irretrievably gone, along with most of Tennes-
see and the northwest quarter of Virginia, New Orleans fallen, Nashville
and Memphis occupied, and North Mississippi itself aswarm with blue-
coats — that now it was Governor Pettus who was calling for reassur-
ance, and calling for it urgently, from the man to whom he previously
had offered it so blandly.
"You have often visited the army of Virginia," he wired Rich-
mond in early December. "At this critical juncture could you not visit
the army of the West? Something must be done to inspire confidence."
By way of reinforcement for this plea there came a letter from
Senator James Phelan, whose home lay in the path of the invaders. "The
present alarming crisis in this state, so far from arousing the people,
seems to have sunk them in listless despondency," he wrote. "The spirit
of enlistment is thrice dead. Enthusiasm has expired to a cold pile of
damp ashes. Defeats, retreats, sufferings, dangers, magnified by spiritless
helplessness and an unchangeable conviction that our army is in the hands
of ignorant and feeble commanders, are rapidly producing a sense of set-
tled despair. ... I imagine but one event that could awaken from its wan-
ing spark the enthusiastic hopes and energy of Mississippians. Plant your
own foot upon our soil, unfurl vour banner at the head of the army, tell
your own people that you have come to share with them the perils of this
dark hour. ... If ever your presence was needed as a last refuge from an
'Iliad of woes,' this is the hour. It is not a point to be argued. [Only] you
can save us or help us save ourselves from the dread evils now so immi-
nently pending."
Flattering as this was, in part — especially the exhortation to "un-
furl your banner," which touched the former hero of Buena Vista where
his inclination was strongest and his vanity was most susceptible — the
senator's depiction of regional gloom and fears, tossed thus into the bal-
ance, added weight to the governor's urgent plea that the Commander in
Chief undertake the suggested journey to his homeland and thereby re-
fute in the flesh the growing complaint that the authorities in Richmond
were concerned only for the welfare of the soldiers and civilians in Vir-
ginia, where if anywhere the war was being won, rather than for those in
the western theater, where if anywhere the war was being lost. Not that
the danger nearest the national capital was slight. Major General Am-
brose Burnside, a month in command of the Army of the Potomac as
successor to Major General George McClellan, who had been relieved
for a lack of aggressiveness, was menacing the line of the Rappahan-
nock with a mobile force of 150,000 men, backed by another 50,000 in
the Washington defenses. To oppose this host General Robert E. Lee
had something under 80,000 in the Army of Northern Virginia moving
toward a concentration near Fredericksburg, where the threat of a cross-
ing seemed gravest, midway of the direct north-south hundred-mile line
[6] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
connecting the two capitals. That the battle, now obviously at hand,
would be fought even closer to the Confederate seat of government ap-
peared likely, for Davis wrote Lee on December 8: "You will know best
when it will be proper to make a masked movement to the rear, should
circumstances require you to move nearer to Richmond."
Something else he said in this same letter. Hard as it was for him
to leave the capital at a time when every day might bring the battle that
would perhaps decide his country's fate, he had made up his mind to heed
the call that reached him from the West. "I propose to go out there im-
mediately," he told Lee, "with the hope that something may be done to
bring out men not heretofore in service, and to arouse all classes to
united and desperate resistance." After expressing the hope that "God
may bless us, as in other cases seemingly as desperate, with success over
our impious foe," he added, by way of apology for not having reviewed
the Virginian's army since it marched northward on the eve of Second
Manassas: "I have been very anxious to visit you, but feeble health and
constant labor have caused me to delay until necessity hurries me in the
opposite direction." He sent the letter by special courier that same De-
cember 8; then, two days later, he himself was off.
He left incognito, aboard a special car and accompanied by a sin-
gle military aide, lest his going stir up rumors that the capital was about
to be abandoned in the face of the threat to the line of the Rappahannock.
His planned itinerary was necessarily roundabout: not only because the
only direct east-west route was closed to him by the Federal grip on the
final hundred miles of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, but also be-
cause he had decided to combine the attempt to restore morale among
the distraught civilians of the region, as suggested by Governor Pettus
and Senator Phelan, with a personal inspection of the two main armies
charged with the defense of the theater bounded east and west by the
Blue Ridge Mountains and the Mississippi River. The Army of Tennes-
see, the larger of the two, northwest of Chattanooga and covering that
city by pretending to threaten Nashville, was under General Braxton
Bragg; the other, the Army of Mississippi under Lieutenant General
John C. Pemberton, covered Vicksburg. Both were menaced by superior
forces, or combinations of forces, under Major Generals William S.
Rosecrans and Ulysses S. Grant, and Davis had lately appointed General
Joseph E. Johnston to co-ordinate the efforts of both armies in order to
meet the double menace by operating on interior lines, much as Lee had
done for the past six months in Virginia, on a smaller scale but with such
success as had won for Confederate arms the admiration of the world.
Johnston's was the more difficult task, albeit one on which the
survival of the nation was equally dependent. Whether it could be per-
formed — specifically, whether it could be performed by Johnston —
remained to be seen. So far, though, the signs had appeared to the gen-
eral himself to be anything but promising. Pemberton was falling back
The Longest Journey [ 7 1
under pressure from Grant in North Mississippi, and Bragg's prepara-
tions for the defense of Middle Tennessee, though they had not yet been
tested by Federal pressure, did not meet with the new commander's ap-
proval when he inspected them this week. In fact, he found in them full
justification for a judgment he had delivered the week before, when he
first established headquarters in Chattanooga. "Nobody ever assumed a
command under more unfavorable circumstances," he wrote to a friend
back East. "If Rosecrans had disposed our troops himself, their disposi-
tion could not have been more unfavorable to us."
Davis did not share the Virginian's gloom; or if he did he did not
show it as he left Richmond, December 10, and rode westward through
Lynchburg and Wytheville and across the state line to Knoxville, where,
beginning his attempt to bolster civilian morale by a show of confi-
dence, he made a speech in which he characterized "the Toryism of East
Tennessee" as "greatly exaggerated." Joined by Lieutenant General
Edmund Kirby Smith, the department commander whose march north
in August and September had cleared the region of bluecoats and de-
livered Cumberland Gap, but whose strength had been reduced by
considerably more than half in the past month as a result of orders to rein-
force Bragg in the adjoining department, the President reached Chatta-
nooga by nightfall and went at once to pay a call on Johnston.
He found him somewhat indisposed, waiting in his quarters.
Short of stature, gray and balding, a year older than Davis despite the fact
that he had been a year behind him at West Point, the general had a
high-colored, wedge-shaped face, fluffed white side whiskers, a grizzled
mustache and goatee, eyes that crinkled attractively at their outer cor-
ners when he smiled, and a jaunty, gamecock manner. Mrs Johnston, in
attendance on her husband, was able to serve their visitor a genuine cup
of coffee: the "real Rio," she reported proudly to a friend next day,
describing the event. She claimed nonetheless the saddest heart in Chat-
tanooga. Whatever Davis might have accomplished elsewhere, on this
arduous first day of the journey he had undertaken "to arouse all
classes to united and desperate resistance," he obviously had had little
success in her direction. "How ill and weary I feel in this desolate land,"
she added in the letter to her friend in the Old Dominion, which she so
much regretted having left, "& how dreary it all looks, & how little
prospect there is of my poor husband doing ought than lose his army.
Truly a forlorn hope it is."
The general himself was far from well, suffering from a flare-
up of the wound that had cost him his Virginia command, six months
ago at Seven Pines, and from a weariness brought on by his just-
completed inspection of the Army of Tennessee. So Davis, postponing
their strategy conference until such time as he would be able to see for
himself the condition of that army, left next day for Bragg's head-
[8] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
quarters at Murfreesboro, ninety miles away and only thirty miles from
Nashville.
It was a two-day visit, and unlike Johnston he was heartened by
what he saw. Serenaded at his hotel by a large and enthusiastic crowd, he
announced that he entertained no fears for the safety of Richmond, that
Tennessee would be held to the last extremity, and that if the people
would but arouse themselves to sustain the conflict, eventual if not im-
mediate foreign intervention would assure a southern victory and peace
on southern terms. His listeners, delighted by a recent exploit beyond
the northern lines by Colonel John H. Morgan, did not seem to doubt
for a moment the validity of his contentions or predictions. Whatever
dejection he might encounter in other portions of the threatened region,
he found here an optimism to match his own. The thirty-seven-year-old
Morgan, with four small regiments of cavalry and two of infantry —
just over 2000 men in all, most of them Kentuckians like himself — had
crossed the icy Cumberland by starlight, in order to strike at dawn on
Sunday, December 7, a Union force of equal strength in camp at Harts-
ville, forty miles upstream from Nashville. Another enemy force, three
times his strength, was camped nine miles away at Castalian Springs,
within easy hearing distance of his guns, but had no chance to interfere.
After less than an hour of fighting, in which he inflicted more than
300 casualties at a cost of 125, Morgan accepted the surrender of
Colonel Absalom B. Moore of Illinois. By noon he was back across the
Cumberland with 1762 prisoners and a wagon train heavily loaded with
captured equipment and supplies, riding hard for Murfreesboro and the
cheers that awaited him there. "A brilliant feat," Joe Johnston called
it, and recommended that Morgan "be appointed brigadier general im-
mediately. He is indispensable."
Davis gladly conferred the promotion in person when he arrived,
receiving from Morgan's own hands in return one of the three sets of
enemy infantry colors the cavalryman had brought home. A formal
review of one corps of the Army of Tennessee next day, followed that
evening by a conference with Bragg and his lieutenants, was equally
satisfying, fulfilling as it did the other half of the President's double-
barreled purpose. "Found the troops there in good condition and fine
spirits," he wired the Secretary of War on December 14, after his return
to Chattanooga the night before. "Enemy is kept close in to Nashville,
and indicates only defensive purposes."
This last had led to a strategic decision, made on the spot and
before consultation with Johnston. As Davis saw it, comparing Pember-
ton's plight with Bragg's, the Mississippi commander was not only more
gravely threatened by a combination of army and naval forces, above
and below the Vicksburg bluff; he was also far more heavily outnum-
bered, and with less room for maneuver. Practically speaking, despite
The Longest Journey [ 9 ]
the assurance lately given the serenaders, the loss of Middle Tennessee
would mean no more than the loss of supplies to be gathered in the
region; whereas the loss of Vicksburg would mean the loss of the Mis-
sissippi River throughout its length, which in turn would mean the loss of
Texas, West Louisiana, Arkansas, and the last tenuous hope for the re-
covery of Missouri. Consequently, in an attempt to even the odds —
east and west, that is; North and South the odds could never be evened,
here or elsewhere — Davis decided to reinforce Pemberton with a
division from Bragg. When the latter protested that this would encour-
age Rosecrans to attack him, he was informed that he would have to take
his chances, depending on maneuver for deliverance. "Fight if you can/'
Davis told him, and if necessary "fall back beyond the Tennessee."
Bragg took the decision with such grace as he could muster; but
not Johnston. When Davis returned to Chattanooga with instructions
for the transfer to be ordered, the Virginian protested for all he was
worth against a policy which seemed to him no better than rob-
bing Peter to pay Paul. Both western armies, he declared, were already
too weak for effective operations; to weaken either was to invite dis-
aster, particularly in Tennessee, which he referred to as "the shield of
the South." But in this matter the President was inflexible. Apparently
reasoning that if the general would not do the job for which he had been
sent here — a balancing and a taking of calculated risks in order to make
the most of the advantage of operating on interior lines — then he
would do it for him, Davis insisted that the transfer order be issued im-
mediately. This Johnston did, though with a heavy heart and still pro-
testing, convinced that he would be proved right in the end.
Whatever Davis's reaction was on learning thus that one of his
two ranking commanders was opposed to availing himself of the one
solid advantage strategically accruing to the South, he had other worries
to fret him now: worries that threatened not a long-range but an im-
mediate collapse, not of a part but of the whole. On his return from
Murfreesboro he heard from the War Department that the national cap-
ital was menaced from two directions simultaneously. A force of un-
determined strength was moving inland from coastal North Carolina
against Goldsboro and the vital Weldon Railroad, and Burnside was
across the Rappahannock. "You can imagine my anxiety," Davis
wrote his wife, chafed by distance and the impossibility of being in two
places at once. "If the necessity demands, I will return to Richmond,
though already there are indications of a strong desire for me to visit the
further West, expressed in terms which render me unwilling to disap-
point the expectation." Presently, however, his anxiety was relieved.
The Carolina invasion, though strongly mounted, had been halted at
the Neuse, well short of the vital supply line, and Lee had inflicted
another staggering defeat on the main northern army, flinging it back
[io] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
across the Rappahannock. Davis was elated at the news, but Johnston's
reaction was curiously mixed. "What luck some people have," he said.
"Nobody will ever come to attack me in such a place."
After a day of rest and conferences, political as well as military,
Davis left Chattanooga late on the afternoon of December 16, accom-
panied by Johnston, who would be making his first inspection of the
western portion of his command. However, with the Memphis &
Charleston in Federal hands along the Tennessee-Mississippi line, their
route at first led south to Atlanta, where they spent the night and Davis
responded to another serenade. Continuing south to Montgomery next
morning, he spoke at midday from the portico of the Alabama capitol,
where he had delivered his first inaugural a week after being notified of
his unexpected election to head the newly established Confederate
States of America. That was nearly two years ago. Whatever thoughts
he had as to the contrast between now and then, as evidenced by the de-
meanor of the crowd that gathered to hear him, he kept to himself as
he and Johnston rode on that night to Mobile, where he spoke formally
for the second time that day. Next morning, December 19, they
reached Jackson, but having agreed to return for a joint appearance
before the Mississippi legislature on the day after Christmas, they only
stayed for lunch and left immediately afterwards for Vicksburg.
This too was a two-day visit, and mainly they spent it inspecting
the town's land and water defenses, which had been extended northward
a dozen miles along a range of hills and ridges overlooking the Yazoo
and its swampy bayous — Chickasaw Bluffs, the range was called, or
sometimes Walnut Hills — and southward about half that far to War-
renton, a hamlet near the lower end of the tall red bluff dominating the
eastern shank of the hairpin bend described at this point by a whim of
the Mississippi. To an untrained eye the installations might look stout
indeed, bristling with guns at intervals for nearly twenty miles, but
Johnston was not pleased by what he saw. To his professional eye, they
not only left much to be desired in the way of execution; their very
conception, it seemed to him, was badly flawed. Nor was he any slower
to say so now than he had been eight months ago at Yorktown, in a
similar situation down the York-James peninsula from Richmond. "In-
stead of a fort requiring a small garrison," which would leave the bulk
of available troops free to maneuver, he protested, the overzealous en-
gineers had made the place into "an immense intrenched camp, requiring
an army to hold it." Besides, scattered as they were along the high
ground north and south "to prevent the bombardment of the town,
instead of to close the navigation of the river to the enemy," the batter-
ies would not be able to concentrate their fire against naval attack. In
these and other matters Johnston expressed his discontent. Davis, a pro-
fessional too, could see the justice in much of this, and though he did not
order the line contracted, he moved to strengthen it by wiring the
The Longest Journey [ u ]
War Department of the "immediate and urgent necessity for heavy
guns and long-range fieldpieces at Vicksburg."
Two bits of news, one welcome, one disturbing, reached them
here in the course of their brief visit. The first was that a Federal iron-
clad, the Cairo, had been sunk up the Yazoo the week before, the result
of an experiment with torpedoes by Commander Isaac N. Brown,
builder and skipper of the Arkansas, which single-handedly had raised
the midsummer naval siege by an all-out attack on the two enemy fleets
before she steamed downriver to her destruction in early August. The
other news was that Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, whose troops
<vere escorted upriver from New Orleans by the deep-draft fleet under
Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, had reoccupied Baton Rouge, aban-
doned three months before by his predecessor, Major General Ben-
jamin F. Butler. Whatever comfort the bluff's defenders found in the
mishap encountered by the Yankees in their probe of the Yazoo was
more than offset by the news that they were approaching in strength
from the opposite direction. Johnston, for one, was convinced that, in
addition to the oooo-man division already on the way from Bragg, an-
other 20,000 troops would be required if Vicksburg and Port Hudson,
another strong point on another bluff three hundred miles downriver,
were to be held against the combined forces of Grant and Banks. What
was more, he thought he knew just where to get them: from the adjoin-
ing Transmississippi Department, commanded by Lieutenant General
Theophilus H. Holmes.
"Our great object is to hold the Mississippi," Johnston told Davis.
In this connection, he firmly believed "that our true system of warfare
would be to concentrate the forces of the two departments" — his and
Holmes's — "on this side of the Mississippi, beat the enemy here, then
reconquer the country beyond it, which [the Federals] might have
gained in the meantime."
Davis had already shown his appreciation of this "true system"
by recommending, a month before he left Richmond and two weeks
before Johnston himself had been assigned to the western com-
mand, that Holmes send reinforcements eastward to assist in the accom-
plishment of the "great objective." Since then, unfortunately, and by
coincidence on the December 7 of Morgan's victory at Hartsville, the
Arkansas army under Major General Thomas C. Hindman, the one mo-
bile force of any size in the department beyond the river, had fought
and lost the Battle of Prairie Grove, up in the northwest corner of the
state. This altered considerably Holmes's ability to comply with the re-
quest. However, instead of pointing out this and other drawbacks to
Johnston's argument — 1 ) that to lose the Transmississippi temporarily
might be to lose it permanently, as a result of losing the confidence of
the people of the region; 2) that the Confederacy, already suf-
fering from the strictures of the Federal blockade, could not afford even
[12] THE CIVIL WAR2ST1862
a brief stoppage of the flow of supplies from Texas and the valleys of
the Arkansas and the Red; and 3) that the transfer east of men in gray
would result in a proportional transfer of men in blue, which would
lengthen rather than shorten the odds on both sides of the river unless
the blow was delivered with unaccustomed lightning speed — Davis
was willing to repeat the recommendation in stronger terms. Accord-
ingly, on this same December 21, he wrote to Holmes in Little Rock,
apprising him of the growing danger and urging full co-operation with
Johnston's plan as set forth in that general's correspondence, which
was included. It was a long letter, and in it the President said in part:
"From the best information at command, a large force is now ready to
descend the Mississippi and co-operate with the army advancing from
Memphis to make an attack upon Vicksburg. Large forces are also re-
ported to have been sent to the lower Mississippi for the purpose of as-
cending the river to attempt the reduction of Port Hudson. ... It seems
to me then unquestionably best that you should reinforce Genl John-
ston." After reminding Holmes that "we cannot hope at all points to
meet the enemy with a force equal to his own, and must find our secur-
ity in the concentration and rapid movement of troops," Davis closed
with a compliment and an admonition: "I have thus presented to you
my views, and trusting alike in your patriotism and discretion, leave you
to make the application of them when circumstances will permit. What-
ever may be done should be done with all possible dispatch."
Johnston's enthusiasm on reading the opening paragraphs of the
letter, which was shown to him before it was given to a courier bound
for Little Rock, was considerably dampened by the close. Judging per-
haps by his own reaction the week before, when he protested against
the detachment of a division from Bragg for this same purpose, he did
not share the President's trust in the "patriotism and discretion" Holmes
was expected to bring to bear, and he noted regretfully that, despite the
final suggestion as to the need for haste, "circumstances" had been left
to govern the application of what Davis called his "views."
Two days later, moreover, the general's gloom was deepened
when they returned to Jackson and proceeded north a hundred miles by
rail to Grenada, where Pemberton had ended his southward retreat in
the face of Grant's advance and had his badly outnumbered field force
hard at work in an attempt to fortify the banks of the Yalobusha River
while his cavalry, under Major General Earl Van Dorn, probed for
Grant's rear in an attempt to make him call a halt, or anyhow slow him
down, by giving him trouble along his lengthening supply line. Here
as at Vicksburg, Johnston found the intrenchments "very extensive,
but slight — the usual defect of Confederate engineering." Nor was he
pleased to discover, as he said later, that "General Pemberton and I ad-
vocated opposite modes of warfare." He would have continued the re-
treat to a better position farther south, hoping for a stronger concentra-
The Longest Journey [ 13 ]
tion; but as usual Davis discounted the advantage of withdrawal and
sided with the commander who was opposed to delaying a showdown.
Christmas Day they returned to Jackson, which gave the Presi-
dent time for an overnight preparation of the speech he would deliver
tomorrow before his home-state legislature. This was not so large a
task as might be thought, despite the fact that he would speak for the
better part of an hour. In general, what he would say here was what he
had been saying for more than two weeks now, en route from Virginia,
through Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, and elsewhere already in
Mississippi. His overnight task was mainly one of consolidating his va-
rious impromptu responses to serenades and calls for "remarks" from
station platforms along the way, albeit with added emphasis on his home
ties and the government's concern for the welfare of the people in what
he called "the further West."
That was why he began by addressing his listeners as "those who,
from the days of my childhood, have ever been the trusted objects of
my affection," and adding: "Whatever fortunes I may have achieved
in life have been gained as a representative of Mississippi, and before all
I have labored for the advancement of her glory and honor. I now, for
the first time in my career, find myself the representative of a wider cir-
cle of interest, but a circle of which the interests of Mississippi are still
embraced. . . . For, although in the discharge of my duties as President
of the Confederate States I had determined to make no distinction be-
tween the various parts of the country — to know no separate state —
yet my heart has always beat more warmly for Mississippi, and I have
looked on Mississippi soldiers with a pride and emotion such as no others
inspired."
Flanked on the rostrum by Governor Pettus and Senator Phelan,
he waited for the polite applause to subside, then launched at once into
an excoriation of the northern government: not only its leaders but also
its followers, in and out of the armies of invasion.
"I was among those who, from the beginning, predicted war . . .
not because our right to secede and form a government of our own was
not indisputable and clearly defined in the spirit of that declaration which
rests the right to govern on the consent of the governed, but because I saw
that the wickedness of the North would precipitate a war upon us.
Those who supposed that the exercise of this right of separation could
not produce war have had cause to be convinced that they had credited
their recent associates of the North with a moderation, a sagacity, a
morality they did not possess. You have been involved in a war waged
for the gratification of the lust of power and aggrandizement, for your
conquest and your subjugation, with a malignant ferocity and with a
disregard and a contempt of the usages of civilization entirely un-
equaled in history. Such, I have ever warned you, were the characteris-
[i 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
tics of the northern people After what has happened during the last
two years, my only wonder is that we consented to live for so long a
time in association with such miscreants and have loved so much a gov-
ernment rotten to the core. Were it ever to be proposed again to enter
into a Union with such a people, I could no more consent to do it than
to trust myself in a den of thieves. . . . There is indeed a difference be-
tween the two peoples. Let no man hug the delusion that there can be
renewed association between them. Our enemies are a traditionless and
homeless race. From the time of Cromwell to the present moment they
have been disturbers of the peace of the world. Gathered together by
Cromwell from the bogs and fens of the north of Ireland and England,
they commenced by disturbing the peace of their own country; they
disturbed Holland, to which they fled; and they disturbed England
on their return. They persecuted Catholics in England, and they hung
Quakers and witches in America."
He spoke next of the conscription act, defending it against its crit-
ics; reviewed the recent successes of Confederate arms, sometimes
against odds that had amounted to four to one; recommended local pro-
vision for the families of soldiers in the field; urged upon the legisla-
tors "the necessity of harmony" between the national government and
the governments of the states; then returned to a bitter expression of his
views as to the contrast between the two embattled peoples.
"The issue before us is one of no ordinary character. We are not
engaged in a conflict for conquest, or for aggrandizement, or for the
settlement of a point of international law. The question for you to decide
is, Will you be slaves or will you be independent? Will you transmit to
your children the freedom and equality which your fathers transmitted
to you, or will you bow down in adoration before an idol baser than
ever was worshipped by Eastern idolators? Nothing more is necessary
than the mere statement of this issue. Whatever may be the personal
sacrifices involved, I am confident that you will not shrink from them
whenever the question comes before you. Those men who now assail
us, who have been associated with us in a common Union, who have
inherited a government which they claim to be the best the world ever
saw — these men, when left to themselves, have shown that they are
incapable of preserving their own personal liberty. They have destroyed
the freedom of the press; they have seized upon and imprisoned mem-
bers of state legislatures and of municipal councils, who were sus-
pected of sympathy with the South; men have been carried off into cap-
tivity in distant states without indictment, without a knowledge of the
accusations brought against them, in utter defiance of all rights guaran-
teed by the institutions under which they live. These people, when sep-
arated from the South and left entirely to themselves, have in six months
demonstrated their utter incapacity for self-government. And yet these
are the people who claim to be your masters. These are the people who
The Longest Journey [ 15 ]
have determined to divide out the South among their Federal troops.
Mississippi they have devoted to the direst vengeance of all. 'But
vengeance is the Lord's,' and beneath His banner you will meet and hurl
back these worse than vandal hordes."
Having attempted thus to breathe heat into what Senator Phelan
had called "a cold pile of damp ashes," Davis spoke of final success as
certain. "Our people have only to be true to themselves to behold the
Confederate flag among the recognized nations of the earth. The ques-
tion is only one of time. It may be remote, but it may be nearer than
many people suppose. It is not possible that a war of the dimensions
that this one has assumed, of proportions so gigantic, can be very long
protracted. The combatants must soon be exhausted. But it is impossible,
with a cause like ours, that we can be the first to cry, 'Hold, enough.' '
He spoke of valor and determination, of his pride in the southern fight-
ing man, and assured his listeners that the Confederacy could accomplish
its own salvation. This last led him into a statement unlike any he had
made before:
"In the course of this war our eyes have often been turned abroad.
We have expected sometimes recognition, and sometimes intervention, at
the hands of foreign nations; and we had a right to expect it. Never
before in the history of the world have a people so long a time main-
tained their ground, and shown themselves capable of maintaining their
national existence, without securing the recognition of commercial na-
tions. I know not why this has been so, but this I say: 'Put not your trust
in princes,' and rest not your hopes on foreign nations. This war is ours;
we must fight it out ourselves. And I feel some pride in knowing that,
so far, we have done it without the good will of anybody."
When the applause that echoed this had died away he defined
what he believed to be the "two prominent objects in the program of the
enemy. One is to get possession of the Mississippi River, and to open it to
navigation, in order to appease the clamors of the [Northwest] and to
utilize the capture of New Orleans, which has thus far rendered them no
service. The other is to seize upon the capital of the Confederacy, and
hold this but as proof that the Confederacy has no existence." The
fourth full-scale attempt to accomplish the latter object had just been
frustrated by Lee at Fredericksburg, he informed the legislature, "and
I believe that, under God and by the valor of our troops, the capital of
the Confederacy will stand safe behind its wall of living breasts." As
for the likelihood that the Unionists might accomplish the first-
mentioned object, Davis admitted that this had caused him grave con-
cern, and was in fact the reason for his present visit.
"This was the land of my affections," he declared. "Here were
situated the little of worldly goods I possessed." He had, he repeated,
"every confidence in the skill and energy of the officers in command.
But when I received dispatches and heard rumors of alarm and trepida-
[i6] THE CIVIL WAR3T1862
tion and despondency among the people of Mississippi; when I heard,
even, that people were fleeing to Texas in order to save themselves from
the enemy; when I saw it stated by the enemy that they had handled
other states with gloves, but Mississippi was to be handled without
gloves — every impulse of my heart dragged me hither, in spite of du-
ties which might have claimed my attention elsewhere. When I heard of
the sufferings of my own people, of the danger of their subjugation by a
ruthless foe, I felt that if Mississippi were destined for such a fate, I
would wish to sleep in her soil." However, now that he had seen for him-
self the condition of the army and the people of his homeland, "I shall
go away from you with a lighter heart . . . anxious, but hopeful.''
In closing he spoke as a man who had kept a vigil through dark-
ness into dawn, so that now he stood in sunlight. "I can, then, say with
confidence that our condition is in every respect greatly improved over
what it was last year. Our armies have been augmented; our troops have
been instructed and disciplined. The articles necessary for the support of
our troops and our people, and from which the enemy's blockade has cut
us off, are being produced by the Confederacy. . . . Our people have
learned to economize and are satisfied to wear homespun. I never see a
woman dressed in homespun that I do not feel like taking off my hat to
her, and although our women never lose their good looks, I cannot help
thinking that they are improved by this garb. I never meet a man
dressed in homespun but I feel like saluting him. I cannot avoid remark-
ing with how much pleasure I have noticed the superior morality of our
troops and the contrast which in this respect they present to the
invader. On their valor and the assistance of God I confidently rely."
The applause that followed had begun to fade, when suddenly it
swelled again, provoked and augmented by loud calls for "Johnston!
Johnston!" At last the general rose and came forward, modestly ac-
knowledging the cheers, which were redoubled. When they subsided
he spoke with characteristic brevity and the self-effacement becoming
to a soldier. "Fellow citizens," he said. "My only regret is that I have
done so little to merit such a greeting. I promise you, however, that
hereafter I shall be watchful, energetic, and indefatigable in your de-
fense." That was all; but it was enough. According to one reporter, the
applause that burst forth as he turned to resume his seat was "tremen-
dous, uproarious, and prolonged." Apparently the general was more pop-
ular than the Chief Executive, even in the latter's own home state.
Despite this evidence of enthusiastic support from the civilians of
the region, now that he had completed his military inspection Johnston
was more dissatisfied than ever with the task which had been thrust into
his hands. His command, he told Davis as soon as they were alone, was
"a nominal one merely, and useless. . . . The great distance between the
Armies of Mississippi and Tennessee, and the fact that they had different
The Longest Journey [ 17 ]
objects and adversaries, made it impossible to combine their action.'*
The only use he saw for his talents, he continued in a subsequent account
of the interview, was as a substitute commander of one of the armies,
"which, as each had its own general, was not intended or desirable."
In short, he told the President, he asked to be excused from serving in a
capacity "so little to my taste."
Davis replied that distance was precisely the factor which had
caused Johnston to be sent here. However far apart the two armies were,
both were certainly too far from Richmond for effective control to
be exercised from there; someone with higher authority than the two
commanders should be at hand to co-ordinate their efforts and "trans-
fer troops from one army to another in an emergency." Unpersuaded,
still perturbed, the general continued to protest that, each being already
"too weak for its object," neither army "could be drawn upon to
strengthen the other," and with so much distance between the two, even
"temporary transfers" were "impracticable." In point of fact, he could
see nothing but ultimate disaster resulting from so unorthodox an ar-
rangement. Once more Davis disagreed. Johnston was not only here;
he was needed here. He must do the best he could. Or as the general put
it, his "objections were disregarded."
On this discordant note the two men parted, Johnston to estab-
lish a new headquarters in the Mississippi capital and Davis to visit his
eldest brother Joseph at his new plantation near Bolton, on the railroad
west of Jackson. Their previous holdings on Davis Bend, just below
Vicksburg — Joseph's, called The Hurricane, and his own, called Brier-
field — had been overrun and sacked by Butler's men during their
abortive upriver thrust, made in conjunction with Farragut's fleet the pre-
vious summer: which, incidentally, was why Davis had used the past
tense in reference to "the little of worldly goods I possessed," and which,
in part, was also why he referred to the Federals as "worse than vandal
hordes."
In the course of his two-day visit with his septuagenarian brother,
good news reached him on December 27 which seemed to indicate that
Johnston's unwelcome burden already had been made a good deal lighter
than he had protested it to be. Grant's army in North Mississippi was in
full retreat; Van Dorn had broken loose in its immediate rear and burned
its forward supply base at Holly Springs, capturing the garrison in the
process, while Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, even farther
in the northern commander's rear, was wrecking vital supply lines and
creating general havoc all over West Tennessee. The following day,
however, on the heels of these glad tidings, came word that Vicksburg
itself was under assault by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman,
who had come downriver from Memphis with the other half of
Grant's command, escorted by Rear Admiral David Porter's ironclad
fleet, and was storming the Chickasaw Bluffs. With the main body off
[i8] THE CIVIL WAR» , 1862
opposing Grant, this was the worst of all possible news, short of the
actual capture of the place; but on the 29th the President's anxiety was
relieved and his spirits lifted by word that Sherman's repulse had been
accomplished as effectively and as decisively, against even longer odds,
as Burnside's had been at Fredericksburg two weeks before. What was
more, the means by which it had been done went far toward sustaining
Davis's military judgment, since the victory had been won in a large
part by two brigades from the division he had recently detached, under
protest, from the Army of Tennessee.
Vicksburg, then, had been delivered from the two-pronged pres-
sure being applied from the north. If Bragg could do even partly as well
in keeping Rosecrans out of Chattanooga, and if the garrison at Port
Hudson could stop Banks and Farragut in their ascent of the Mississippi,
the multiple threats to the western theater would have been smashed all
round, or anyhow blunted for a season, despite the dire predictions made
only that week by its over-all commander. One thing at any rate was
certain. The President's long train ride back to Richmond would be
made in a far more genial atmosphere, militarily speaking, than he had
encountered at successive stops in the course of the outward journey.
He left Jackson on the last day of the year, and after speaking
again that evening from a balcony of the Battle House in Mobile, re-
ceived while retracing in reverse his route through Alabama and Geor-
gia a double — indeed, a triple — further measure of good tidings. "God
has granted us a happy New Year," Bragg wired from Murfreesboro.
Rosecrans had ventured out of his intrenchments to attack the Army
of Tennessee, which had then turned the tables with a dawn assault,
jackknifing the Union right against the Union left. Not only was
Chattanooga secure, but from the sound of the victorious commander's
dispatch, Nashville itself might soon be recovered. "The enemy has
yielded his strong position and is falling back," Bragg exulted. "We
occupy whole field and shall follow him."
The pleasure Davis felt at this — augmented as it was by infor-
mation that John Morgan had outdone himself in Kentucky on a Christ-
mas raid, wrecking culverts, burning trestles, and capturing more than
two thousand men, while Forrest and Van Dorn were returning safely
from their separate and equally spectacular raids, the former after es-
caping a convergence designed for his destruction at Parker's Crossroads,
deep inside the enemy lines — was raised another notch by word that a
Federal reconnaissance force, sent upriver by Banks from Baton Rouge,
had turned tail at the unexpected sight, of the guns emplaced on Port
Hudson's bluff and steamed back down without offering a chal-
lenge. And when this in turn was followed by still a third major item
in the budget of good news, the presidential cup ran over. Major Gen-
eral John B. Magruder, recently arrived to take command of all the
Confederates in Texas, had improvised a two-boat fleet of "cotton-
The Longest Journey [ 19 J
clads" and had retaken Galveston in a New Year's predawn surprise
attack, destroying one Yankee deep-water gunboat and forcing an-
other to strike its colors. With the surrender of the army garrison in
occupation of the island town, Texas was decontaminated. The only
bluecoats still on her soil were Magruder's prisoners.
Leaving Mobile, Davis again visited Montgomery and Atlanta,
but passing through the latter place he proceeded, not north to Chat-
tanooga, but eastward to Augusta, where he spent the night of January
2. Next morning he entered South Carolina for the first time since the
removal of the government to Richmond, back in May, and after a halt
for a speech in Columbia, the capital, went on that night across the state
line to Charlotte. At noon the following day he spoke in Raleigh, the
North Carolina capital, then detoured south to Wilmington, the princi-
pal east coast port for blockade-runners, where he received the first
really disturbing military news that had reached him since he left Vir-
ginia, nearly a month before. Instead of "following" the defeated Rose-
crans, as he had said he would do, Bragg had waited a day before re-
suming the offensive, and then had been repulsed; whereupon, having
been informed that the enemy had been reinforced — and bearing in
mind, moreover, the Commander in Chief's recent advice: "Fight if you
can, and fall back [if you must]" — he fell back thirty miles to a better
defensive position on Duck River, just in front of Tullahoma and still
protecting Chattanooga, another fifty-odd miles in his rear. As at Perry-
ville, three months ago, he had won a battle and then retreated. Not that
Murfreesboro was not still considered a victory; it was, at least in south-
ern eyes. Only some of the luster had been lost. Davis, however, placing
emphasis on the odds and the fact that Chattanooga was secure,
counted it scarcely less a triumph than before. In response to a Wil-
mington serenade, tendered just after he received word that Bragg had
fallen back, he spoke for a full hour from his hotel balcony. Employing
what one hearer called "purity of diction" and a "fervid eloquence" to
match the enthusiasm of the torchlight serenaders, he characterized
recent events as a vindication of the valor of southern arms, and even
went so far as to repeat the words he had spoken to a similar crowd from
a Richmond balcony on the jubilant morrow of First Manassas: "Never
be humble to the haughty. Never be haughty to the humble."
That was a Sunday. Next day, January 5, he covered the final
leg of his long journey, returning to Richmond before dark. He was
weary and he looked it, and with cause, for in twenty-five days he had
traveled better than twenty-five hundred miles and had made no less
than twenty-five public addresses, including some that had lasted more
than an hour. However, his elation overmatched his weariness, and this
too was with cause. He knew that he had done much to restore civilian
morale by appearing before the disaffected people, and militarily the
gains had been even greater. Though mostly they had been fought
[zo] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1862
against odds that should have been oppressive, if not completely paralyz-
ing, of the several major actions which had occurred during his absence
from the capital or on the eve of his departure — Prairie Grove and
Hartsville, Fredericksburg and Goldsboro, Holly Springs and Chicka-
saw Bluffs, Galveston and Murfreesboro — all were resounding victo-
ries except the first and possibly the last. Taken in conjunction with
the spectacular Christmas forays of Morgan and Forrest, the torpedoing
of the Cairo up the Yazoo River, and Grant's enforced retreat in North
Mississippi, these latest additions to the record not only sustained the
reputation Confederate arms had gained on many a field during the year
just passed into history; they also augured well for a future which only
lately had seemed dark. Defensively speaking, indeed, the record could
scarcely have been improved. Of the three objectives the Federals had
set for themselves, announcing them plainly to all the world by moving
simultaneously against them as the year drew to a close, Vicksburg had
been disenthralled and Chattanooga remained as secure as Richmond.
Davis himself had done as much as any man, and a good deal
more than most, to bring about the result that not a single armed enemy
soldier now stood within fifty air-line miles of any one of these three
vital cities. It was therefore a grateful, if weary, President who was met
by his wife and their four children on the steps of the White House, late
that Monday afternoon of the first week of the third calendar year of
this second American war for independence.
X 2 X
Of all these various battles and engagements, fought in all these various
places, Fredericksburg, the nearest to the national capital, was the larg-
est — in numbers engaged, if not in bloodshed — as well as the grandest
as a spectacle, in which respect it equaled, if indeed it did not outdo, any
other major conflict of the war. Staged as it was, with a curtain of fog
that lifted, under the influence of a genial sun, upon a sort of natural
amphitheater referred to by one of the 200,000 participants, a native of
the site, as "a champaign tract inclosed by hills," it quite fulfilled the
volunteers' early-abandoned notion of combat as a picture-book affair.
What was more, the setting had been historical long before the armies
met there to add a bloody chapter to a past that had been peaceful up to
now. John Paul Jones had lived as a boy in the old colonial town that
gave its name and sacrificed the contents of its houses to the battle. Hugh
Mercer's apothecary shop and James Monroe's law office were two
among the many points of interest normally apt to be pointed out to
strangers by the four thousand inhabitants, most of whom had lately
been evacuated, however, by order of the commander of the army
whose looters would presently take the place apart and whose corpses
The Longest Journey [ 21 ]
would find shallow graves on its unwarlike lawns and in its gardens.
Here the widowed Mary Washington had lived, and it was here or near
here that her son was reported to have thrown a Spanish silver dollar
across the Rappahannock. During the battle itself, from one of the
dominant hills where he established his forward command post, R. E.
Lee would peer through rifts in the swirling gunsmoke in an attempt
to spot in the yard of Chatham, a mansion on the heights beyond the
river, the old tree beneath whose branches he had courted Mary Custis,
granddaughter of the woman who later married the dollar-flinging
George and thus became the nation's first first lady.
Yet it was Burnside, not Lee, who had chosen the setting for
the impending carnage. Appointed to succeed his friend McClellan be-
cause of that general's apparent lack of aggressiveness after the Battle
of Antietam, he had shifted the Army of the Potomac eastward to this
point where the Rappahannock, attaining its head of navigation,
swerved suddenly south to lave the doorsteps of the town on its right
bank. Washington lay fifty miles behind him; Richmond, his goal, lay
fifty miles ahead. Mindful of the President's admonition that his plan
for eluding Lee in order to descend on the southern capital would suc-
ceed "if you move very rapidly, otherwise not," he had indeed moved
rapidly; but, as it turned out, he had moved to no avail. Though he had
successfully given Lee the slip, the pontoons he had requisitioned in ad-
vance from Harpers Ferry, altogether necessary if he was to cross the
river, did not reach the Fredericksburg area until his army had been
massed in jump-off positions for more than a week; by which time, to
hisconfoundment, Lee had the opposite ridges bristling with guns that
were trained on the prospective bridge sites. Burnside was so profoundly
distressed by this turn of events that he spent two more weeks looking
down on the town from the left-bank heights, with something of the
intentness and singularity of purpose which he had displayed, back in
September at Antietam, looking down at the little triple-arched bridge
that ever afterwards bore his name as indelibly as if the intensity of his
gaze had etched it deep into the stone. Meanwhile, by way of increasing
his chagrin as Lee's butternut veterans clustered thick and thicker on
the hills across the way, it was becoming increasingly apparent, not
only to the northern commander but also to his men, that what had
begun as a sprint for Richmond had landed him and them in coffin cor-
ner.
He had troubles enough, in all conscience, but at least they were
not of the kind that proceeded from any shortage of troops. Here op-
posite Fredericksburg, ready to execute his orders as soon as he could
decide what those orders were going to be, Burnside had 12 1,402 effec-
tives in his six corps of three divisions each. Organized into three Grand
Divisions of two corps each, these eighteen divisions were supported by
312 pieces of artillery. Nor was that all. Marching on Dumfries,
[22] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
twenty miles to the north, were two more corps with an effective
strength of 27,724 soldiers and 97 guns. In addition to this field force of
nearly 150,000 men, supported by more than 400 guns, another 52,000
in the Washington defenses and along the upper Potomac were also in-
cluded in his nominal command; so that his total "present for duty"
during this second week of December — at any rate the first part of it,
before the butchering began — was something over 200,000 of all arms.
He did not know the exact strength of the rebels waiting for him
beyond the town and at other undetermined positions downriver, but
he estimated their strength at just over 80,000 men.
In this — unlike McClellan, who habitually doubled and some-
times even tripled an enemy force by estimation — he was not far off.
Lee had nine divisions organized into two corps of about 35,000 each,
which, together with some 8000 cavalry and artillery, gave him a total
of 78,511 effectives, supported by 275 guns. He had, then, not quite
two thirds as many troops in the immediate vicinity as his opponent had.
By ordinary, as he had lately told the Secretary of War, he thought it
preferable, considering the disparity of force, "to attempt to baffle
[the enemy's] designs by maneuvering rather than to resist his advance
by main force." However, he found his present position so advanta-
geous — naturally strong, though not so formidable in appearance as to
rule out the possibility of an attempted assault — that he was deter-
mined to hold his ground, despite the odds, in the belief that the present
situation contained the seeds of another full-scale Federal disaster.
Except for two detached brigades of cavalry, his whole army
was at hand. So far, though, he had effected the concentration of only
one corps, leaving the other spread out downstream to guard the cross-
ings all the way to Port Royal, twenty miles below. The first corps,
five divisions under Lieutenant General James Longstreet — "Old Pe-
ter," his men called him, adopting his West Point nickname; Lee had
lately dubbed him "my old warhorse" — was in position on the slopes
and crest of a seven-mile-long range of hills overlooking the mile-wide
"champaign tract" that gave down upon the town and the river, its
flanks protected right and left by Massaponax Creek and the southward
bend of the Rappahannock. Forbidding in appearance, the position was
even more formidable in fact; for the range of hills — in effect, a bro-
ken ridge — was mostly wooded, affording concealment for the in-
fantry, and the batteries had been sited with such care that when Long-
street suggested the need for another gun at a critical point, the artillery
commander replied: "General, we cover that ground now so well that
we comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that
field when we open on it."
The other corps commander, Lieutenant General Thomas Jon-
athan Jackson — "Old Jack" to his men, redoubtable "Stonewall" to the
world at large — had three of his four divisions posted at eight-mile in-
The Longest Journey
[*3l
tervals downstream, one on the south bank of Massaponax Creek, one
at Skinker's Neck, and one near Port Royal, while the fourth was held
at Guiney Station, on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Rail-
road, eight miles in rear of Longstreet's right at Hamilton's Crossing.
Despite the possibility that Burnside might swamp Longstreet with a
sudden assault, outnumbering him no less that three-to-one, Lee ac-
cepted the risk of keeping the second corps widely scattered in order to
be able to challenge the Union advance at the very outset, whenever and
wherever it began. Jackson, on the other hand, would have preferred
to fight on the line of the North Anna, a less formidable stream thirty
miles nearer Richmond, rather than here on the Rappahannock, which
he believed would be an effective barrier to pursuit of the beaten Yan-
kees when they retreated, as he was sure they would do, under cover of
their superior artillery posted on the dominant left-bank heights. "We
will whip the enemy, but gain no fruits of victory," he predicted.
In point of fact, whatever validity Jackson might have as a
prophet, Lee not only accepted the risk of a sudden, all-out attack on
Longstreet; he actually preferred it. Though he expected the crossing to
be attempted at some point downriver, in which case he intended to chal-
lenge it at the water's edge, it was his fervent hope that Burnside could
be persuaded — or, best of all, would persuade himself — to make one
here. In that case, Lee did not intend to contest the crossing itself with
any considerable force. The serious challenge would come later, when
the enemy came at him across that open, gently undulating plain. He had
confidence that Old Peter, securely intrenched along the ridge, his guns
already laid and carefully ranged on check points, could absorb the
shock until the two closest of Stonewall's divisions could be summoned.
LONqSTREET
SpotsulOcmias*
Station/
[ 2 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
Their arrival would give the Confederate infantry the unaccustomed
numerical wealth of six men to every yard of their seven-mile line:
which Lee believed would be enough, not only to repulse the Federals,
but also to enable the graybacks to launch a savage counterstroke, in the
style of Second Manassas, that would drive the bluecoats in a panicky
mass and pen them for slaughter against the unfordable river, too thickly
clustered for escape across their pontoon bridges and too closely inter-
mingled with his own charging troops for the Union artillery to attempt
a bombardment from the opposite heights. It was unlikely that Burnside
would thus expose his army to the Cannae so many Southerners believed
was overdue. It was, indeed, almost too much to hope for. But Lee did
hope for it. He hoped for it intensely.
Burnside, too, was weighing these possibilities, and it seemed to
him also that the situation was heavy with the potentials of disaster:
much more so, in fact, than it had been before he shifted his army east-
ward in November from the scene of Pope's late- August rout. Though
so far he had escaped direct connection with a military fiasco, he had
not been unacquainted with sudden blows of adversity in the years
before the war. Once as a newly commissioned lieutenant on his way to
the Mexican War he had lost his stake to a gambler on a Mississippi
steamboat, and again in the mid-5 o's he had failed to get a government
contract for the manufacture of a breech-loading rifle he had invented
and put his cash in after leaving the army to devote full time to its pro-
motion, which left him so broke that he had to sell his sword and uni-
forms for money to live on until his friend McClellan gave him a job
with the land office of a railroad, where he prospered. Between these
two financial upsets, he had received his worst personal shock when a
Kentucky girl, whom he had wooed and finally persuaded to accom-
pany him to the altar, responded to the minister's final ceremonial ques-
tion with an abrupt, emphatic "No!" Hard as they had been to take,
these three among several lesser setbacks had really hurt no one but
himself, nor had they seriously affected the thirty-eight-year-old gen-
eral's basically sunny disposition. But now that he had the lives of two
hundred thousand men dependent on his abilities, not to mention the
possible outcome of a war in which his country claimed to be fighting
for survival, he did not face the likelihood of failure with such equanim-
ity as he had shown in those previous trying situations. Formerly a
hearty man, whose distinctive ruff of dark brown whiskers described a
flamboyant double parabola below a generous, wide-nostriled nose, a
pair of alert, dark-socketed eyes, and a pale expanse of skin that ex-
tended all the way back to the crown of his head, he had be-
come increasingly morose and fretful here on the high left bank of the
Rappahannock. "I deem it my duty," he had advised his superiors during
the interim which followed the nonarrival of the pontoons at the climax
of his rapid cross-country march, "to say that I cannot make the promise
The Longest Journey [ 25 ]
of probable success with the faith that I did when I supposed that all
the parts of the plan would be carried out."
This was putting it rather mildly. Yet, notwithstanding his
qualms, he had evolved a design which he believed would work by vir-
tue of its daring. His balloons were up, despite the blustery weather, and
the observers reported heavy concentrations of rebels far downstream.
He had intended to throw his bridges across the river at Skinker's Neck,
ten miles beyond Lee's immediate right, then march directly on the rail-
road in the southern army's rear, thus forcing its retreat to protect its
supply line. However, the balloon reports convinced him that Lee had
divined his purpose, and this — plus the difficulty of concealing his
preparations in that quarter, which led him to suspect that he would be
doing nothing more than side-stepping into another stalemate — caused
him to shift the intended attack back to the vicinity of Fredericksburg
itself, where he could use the town to mask the crossing. It was a bold
decision, made in the belief that, of all possible moves, this was the one
his opponent would be least likely to suspect until it was already in exe-
cution: which, as he saw it from the Confederate point of view, would
be too late. The troops below were Jackson's, the renowned "foot cav-
alry" of the Army of Northern Virginia, but a good part of them were
as much as twenty miles away. By the time they arrived, if all went as
Burnside intended, there would be no other half of their army for them
to support; he would have crushed it, and they would find that what
they had been hastening toward was slaughter or surrender.
Accordingly, early on December 9, a warning order went out
for Grand Division commanders to report to army headquarters at
noon, by which time they were to have alerted their troops, supplied
each man with sixty rounds of ammunition, and begun the issue of
three days' cooked rations. They would have the rest of today to get
ready, he told them, and all of tomorrow. Then, in the predawn dark-
ness of Thursday, December 1 1 , the engineers would throw the six
bridges by which the infantry and cavalry would cross for the attack,
followed at once by such artillery as had been assigned to furnish close-
up support. The crossing would be made in two general areas, one di-
rectly behind the town and the other just below it, with three bridges at
each affording passage for the left and right Grand Divisions, com-
manded respectively by Major Generals William B. Franklin and Edwin
V. Sumner. The center Grand Division, under Major General Joseph
Hooker, would lend weight to the assault by detaching two of its di-
visions to Franklin and the other four to Sumner, giving them each a
total of approximately 60,000 men, including cavalry and support ar-
tillery. Burnside's intention — not unlike McClellan's at Antietam, ex-
cept that the flanks were reversed — was for Franklin's column to
attack and carry the lower end of the ridge on which the Confederates
were intrenched, then wheel and sweep northward along it while the
[26] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
enemy was being held in place by attacks delivered simultaneously
by Sumner on the right. It was simple enough, as all such designs for
destruction were meant to be. In fact, Burnside apparently considered
it so readily comprehensible as to require little or no incidental explana-
tion when the three generals reported to him at noon.
One additional subterfuge he would employ, but that was
all. The engineers at Skinker's Neck, assisted by a regiment of Maine
axmen, would be kept at work felling trees and laying a corduroy ap-
proach down to the riverbank at that point, as if for the passage of in-
fantry with artillery support. The sound of chopping, along with the
glow of fires at night, would help to delude the rebels in their expecta-
tion of a crossing there. However, even this was but a strengthening of
the original subterfuge, the shifting of the main effort back upstream, on
which the ruff-whiskered general based his belief, or at any rate his
hope, that he would find Lee unprepared and paralyze him with his
daring.
That was a good deal more than any of the northern com-
mander's predecessors had been able to do, but Burnside's gloom had been
dispelled; his confidence had risen now to zenith. As he phrased it in a
dispatch telegraphed to Washington near midnight, outlining his attack
plan and divulging his expectations, "I think now that the enemy will
be more surprised by a crossing immediately in our front than in any
other part of the river. The commanders of Grand Divisions coincide
with me in this opinion, and I have accordingly ordered the movement.
. . . We hope to succeed."
Lee was indeed surprised, though not unpleasantly. Already
a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer, he might have seen in this de-
velopment a further confirmation of his faith. Nor was the surprise as
complete as Burnside had intended. On Wednesday night, December 10,
a woman crept down to the east bank of the Rappahannock and called
across to the gray pickets that the Yankees had drawn a large issue of
cooked rations — always a sign that action was at hand. Then at 4.45
next morning, two hours before dawn, two guns boom-boomed the
prearranged signal that the enemy was attempting a crossing here in
front of Fredericksburg. At once the Confederate bivouacs were astir
with men turning out of their blankets to take the posts already as-
signed them along the ridge overlooking the plain that sloped eastward
to the old colonial town, still invisible in the frosty darkness.
In it there was one brigade of Mississippi infantry, bled down to
1600 veterans under Brigadier General William Barksdale, a former
congressman with long white hair and what one of his soldiers called "a
thirst for battle glory." He had had his share of this in every major en-
gagement since Manassas, but today was his best chance to slake that
thirst; for Lee, being unwilling to subject the town to shelling, had left
The Longest Journey [ 27 ]
to these few Deep South troops the task of contesting the crossing — not
with any intention of preventing it, even if that had been possible in the
face of all those guns on the dominant heights, but merely to make it as
costly to the Federals as he could. Barksdale received the assignment
gladly, posting most of his men in stout brick houses whose rear walls,
looking out upon the river, they loopholed so as to draw their beads
with a minimum of distraction in the form of return fire from the
men they would be dropping when the time came. Shortly after mid-
night, hearing sounds of preparation across the way — the muffled tread
of soldiers on the march, the occasional whinny of a horse or bray of
a mule, the clank of trace-chains, and at last the ponderous rumble of
what he took to be pontoons being brought down from the heights
— he knew the time was very much at hand. After sending word of this
to his superiors, he saw to it that the few remaining civilians, mostly
women and children, with a sprinkling of old men, either hastened
away to the safety of the hills or else took refuge in their cellars.
He was in no hurry to open fire, preferring not to waste ammuni-
tion in the darkness. Long before daylight, however, his men could
hear the Federal engineers at work: low-voiced commands, the clatter
of lumber, and at intervals the loud crack of half-inch skim ice as an-
other pontoon was launched. This last drew closer with every repetition
as the bridge was extended, unit by six-foot unit, across the intervening
four hundred feet of water. At last, judging by the sound that the pon-
toniers had reached midstream, the waiting riflemen opened fire. They
aimed necessarily by ear, but the result was satisfactory. After the first
yelp of pain there was the miniature thunder of boots on planks, di-
minishing as the runners cleared the bridge; then silence, broken pres-
ently by the boom-boom of the two guns passing the word along the
ridge that the Yanks were coming.
Soon they returned to the bridge-end, working as quietly as
possible since every sound, including even the squeak of a bolt, was
echoed by the crack of rifles from the western bank. It was perilous
work, but it was nothing compared to the trouble brought by a misty
dawn and a rising sun that began to burn the fog away, exposing the
workers to aimed shots from marksmen whose skill was practically
superfluous at a range of two hundred feet. A pattern was quickly estab-
lished. The pontoniers would rush out onto the bridge, take up their
tools, and work feverishly until the fire grew too hot; whereupon they
would drop their tools and run the gauntlet back to bank. Then, as
they got up their nerve again, their officers would lead or chevy them
back onto the bridge, where the performance would be repeated. This
went on for hours, to the high delight of the Mississippians, who jeered
and hooted as they shot and waited, then shot and waited to shoot some
more.
By 10 o'clock the northern commander's patience had run out.
[28] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
The movement was already hours off schedule; Longstreet's signal guns
had announced Lee's alertness, and Jackson's lean marchers might well
be on the way by now. Rifle fire having proved ineffective against the
snipers behind the brick walls of the houses along the riverbank, Burn-
side ordered his chief of artillery, Brigadier General Henry Hunt, to
open fire with the 147 heavy-caliber guns posted on Stafford Heights,
frowning down on the old town a hundred feet below. The response
was immediate and uproarious, and it lasted for more than an hour,
Hunt having instructed his gun crews to maintain a rate of fire of one
shot every two minutes. Seventy-odd solid shot and shells a minute were
thrown until 5000 had been fired. During all that time, a correspondent
wrote, "the earth shook beneath the terrific explosions of the shells,
which went howling over the river, crashing into houses, battering down
walls, splintering doors, ripping up floors."
As a spectacle of modern war it was a great success, and it was
also quite successful against the town. It wrecked houses, setting several
afire; it tore up cobblestones; it shook the very hills the armies stood on.
But it did not seem to dampen the spirits or influence the marksmanship
of the Mississippians, who rose from the rubble and dropped more of the
pontoniers, driving them again from the work they had returned to dur-
ing the lull that followed the bombardment. When Barksdale sent a mes-
sage asking whether he should have his men put out the fires, Longstreet
replied: "You have enough to do to watch the Yankees." Back at Lee's
observation post, the sight of what the Union guns had done to the
Old Dominion town so riled the southern commander that he broke out
wrathfully against the cannoneers and the officers who had given them
orders to open fire. "Those people delight to destroy the weak and those
who can make no defense," he said hotly. "It just suits them!" How-
ever, when he sent to inquire after the welfare of Barksdale's men and to
see if there was anything they wanted, that general sent back word that
he had everything he needed. But he added, "Tell General Lee that if
he wants a bridge of dead Yankees, I can furnish him with one."
It was well past noon by now. Hunt, admitting that his guns could
never dislodge the rebels, suggested that infantry use the pontoons as
assault boats in order to get across the river and pry the snipers out of
the rubble with bayonets. A Michigan regiment drew the duty, sup-
ported by two others from Massachusetts, and did it smartly, establish-
ing a bridgehead in short order. During the street fighting, which used
up what was left of daylight, the bridges were laid and other regiments
came to their support. Barksdale's thirst was still unslaked, however.
When he received permission to withdraw, he declined and kept on
fighting, house to house, until past sundown. Not till dusk had fallen
was he willing to call it a day, and even then he had trouble persuading
some of his men to agree. This was particularly difficult in the case of
the rear-guard company, whose commander somehow discovered in
The Longest Journey f 29 ]
the course of the engagement that the Federal advance was being led by
a Massachusetts company whose commander had been his classmate at
Harvard. The Mississippi lieutenant called a halt and faced his men
about, determined to whip his blue-clad friend then and there, until his
colonel had him placed in arrest in order to continue the withdrawal. It
was 7 o'clock by the time the last of Barksdale's veterans crossed the
plain to join their admiring comrades on the ridge, leaving Fredericks-
burg to the bluecoats they had been fighting for fifteen hours.
Not until well after dark did Lee order Jackson to bring his two
nearest divisions to Longstreet's support, and not even then did he sum-
mon the other two from Port Royal and Skinker's Neck, where the
Maine axmen on the opposite bank had kindled campfires around which
they were resting from their daylong chopping. Pleased though he was
with the day's work — his eyes had lighted up at each report that a new
attempt to extend the bridge had been defeated — Lee simply could not
believe that his hopes had been so completely fulfilled that the enemy
was concentrating everything for an attack against the ridge where his
guns had been laid for weeks now and his infantry was disposed at ease
in overlapping lines of battle.
Across the way, on Stafford Heights, Burnside too was pleased.
Despite delays that had been maddening, he had his six bridges down at
last (the three lower ones, below the town, had been down since noon,
but he had hesitated to use them so long as the Fredericksburg force of
unknown strength was in position on their flank) and his army was as-
sembled for the crossing. Besides, he had received balloon reports at
sundown informing him that the other half of the rebel army was still in
its former positions down the river, with no signs of preparation for a
move in this direction. The delay, it seemed, had cost him nothing more
than some nervous twinges and a few expendable combat engineers; Lee
might be caught napping yet. So confidently did the ruff-whiskered gen-
eral feel next morning, when observers reported Jackson's troops still in
position at Skinker's Neck and Port Royal, twenty miles away, that he
decided he could afford to spend another day assembling his army on
the west bank of the Rappahannock for the assault across the empty
plain and against the rebel ridge.
Fog shrouded the entire valley while the long blue lines of men
came steeply down to the riverbank and broke step as they crossed the
swaying bridges. On the heights above, the Union guns fired blindly
over their heads, in case the Confederates attempted to challenge the
crossing. They did not. At noon, however, the fog lifted; Lee, with a
close-up view of the bluecoats massed in their thousands beyond the
plain, saw at once that this was no feint, but a major effort. He sent for
Jackson's other two divisions, instructing them to begin their long
marches immediately in order to arrive in time for the battle, which he
now saw would be fought tomorrow. Beyond that he could do no more.
[ 3 o] THE CIVIL WAR»-1862
Though he was outnumbered worse than three-to-two, and knew it, he
was in good spirits as he rode on a sundown inspection of his lines.
Returning to headquarters, he seemed pleased that the Federals on the
flat were about to charge him. "I shall try to do them all the damage in
our power when they move forward," he said.
Down in the town, meanwhile, the Union soldiers had been hav-
ing themselves a field day. Cavalrymen ripped the strings from grand
pianos to make feed troughs for their horses, while others cavorted amid
the rubble in women's lace-trimmed underwear and crinoline gowns
snatched from closets and bureau drawers. Scarcely a house escaped
pillage. Family portraits were slashed with bayonets; pier glass mirrors
were shattered with musket butts; barrels of flour and molasses were
dumped together on deep-piled rugs. It was all a lot of fun, especially
for the more fortunate ones who found bottles of rare old madeira in
the cellars. Gradually, though, the excitement paled and the looters be-
gan to speculate as to why the rebs had made no attempt to challenge
the crossing today, not even with their artillery. Some guessed it was
because they had no ammunition to spare, others that they were afraid
of retaliation by "our siege guns." One man had a psychological theory:
"General Lee thinks he will have a big thing on us about the bombard-
ment of this town. He proposes to rouse the indignation of the civilized
world, as they call it. You'll see he won't throw a shell into it. He is
playing for the sympathies of Europe." Still another, a veteran private,
had a different idea. "Shit," he said. "They want us to get in. Getting out
won't be quite so smart and easy. You'll see."
• • •
They would see; but not just yet. Day broke on a fog so thick
that the sun, which rose at 7.17 beyond the Union left, could not pierce
it, but rather gave an eerie, luminous quality to the mist that swathed the
ridge where Lee's reunited army awaited the challenge foretold by
sounds of preparation on the invisible plain below; "an indistinct mur-
mur," one listener called it, "like the distant hum of myriads of bees."
Longstreet held the Confederate left. Four of his five divisions
were on line, commanded north to south by Major Generals Richard
Anderson, Lafayette McLaws, George Pickett, and John Bell Hood;
the fifth and smallest, a demi-division under Brigadier General Robert
Ransom, was in reserve. Jackson, on the right, had posted Major Gen-
eral A. P. Hill's large division along his entire front, backed by a second
line of two close-packed divisions under Brigadier Generals William
Taliaferro and Jubal Early, which in turn was supported by Major
General D. H. Hill's division, just arrived from Port Royal after an all-
night march. Major General J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry guarded the flank,
extending it southward from Hamilton's Crossing to Massaponax Creek.
Since this end of the ridge was considerably lower than the other, and
The Longest Journey
h'l
consequently much less easy to defend, Lee had assigned five miles of the
line to Longstreet and only two to Jackson, who thus had no less than
ten men to every yard of front and could distribute them in depth. It
was no wonder, then, that he replied this morning to a staff officer's ex-
pression of qualms about the enemy strength and the lowness of
the ridge in this direction: "Major, my men have sometimes failed to
take a position, but to defend one, never! I am glad the Yankees are
coming."
Lee and Longstreet stood on an eminence known thereafter as
Lee's Hill because that general had set up his forward command post
here, about midway of Longstreet's line, with an excellent view — or at
any rate what would be an excellent view, once the curtain of fog had
lifted — of the lines in both directions, including most of Jackson's line
to the south, as well as of Fredericksburg and the snow-pocked plain
where the blue host was massing under cover of their guns on Stafford
Heights, preparing even now to give the lower ridge across the way a
long-range pounding. Today as yesterday, however, the southern com-
mander was in good spirits. Tall and comely — nothing less, indeed,
§1 Fcdvnautfi •
[32] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
than "the handsomest man in Christendom," according to one who saw
him there this morning — neatly dressed, as always, with only the
three unwreathed stars on the collar of his thigh-length gray sack coat to
show his rank, he gave no sign of nervousness or apprehension. Above
the short-clipped iron-gray beard and beneath the medium brim of a
sand-colored planter's hat, his quick brown eyes had a youthfulness
which, together with the litheness of his figure and the deftness of his
movements, disguised the fact that he would be fifty-six years old
next month.
His companion seemed to share his confidence, if not his hand-
someness of person, though he too was prepossessing of appearance. A
burly, shaggy man, six feet tall, of Dutch extraction and just past forty-
one, Longstreet gave above all an impression of solidity and dependabil-
ity. His men's great fondness for him was based in part on their knowl-
edge of his concern for their well-being, in and out of combat. Yesterday,
for example, when some engineers protested to him that the gun crews
were ruining their emplacements by digging them too deep, Old Peter
would not agree to order them to stop. "If we only save the finger of a
man, that's good enough," he told the engineers, and the cannoneers kept
digging. Often phlegmatic, this morning he was in an expansive mood:
especially after he and Lee were joined by the third-ranking member of
the army triumvirate, who came riding up from the south. It was Jack-
son, but a Jackson quite unlike the Stonewall they had known of old.
Gone were the mangy cadet cap and the homespun uniform worn
threadbare since its purchase on the eve of the Valley Campaign,
through the miasmic nightmare of the Seven Days, the suppression of
the "miscreant Pope" at Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas, the in-
vasion of Maryland and the hard fight at Sharpsburg. Instead he wore a
new cap bound with gold braid, and more braid — "chicken guts," Con-
federate soldiers irreverently styled the stuff — looped on the cuffs and
sleeves of a brand-new uniform, a recent gift from Jeb Stuart. Even his
outsized boots were brightly polished. For all his finery, he looked as
always older than his thirty-eight years. His pale blue eyes were stern,
his thin-lipped mouth clamped forbiddingly behind the scraggly dark-
brown beard; but this had not protected him from the jibes of his men,
who greeted him with their accustomed rough affection as he rode
among them. "Come here, boys!" they yelled. "Stonewall has drawed
his bounty and bought hisself some new clothes." Others shook their
heads in mock dismay at seeing him tricked out like some newly com-
missioned quartermaster lieutenant. "Old Jack will be afraid for his
clothes," they said, doleful amid the catcalls, "and will not get down to
work."
He had ridden all this way, exposing himself to all that raillery,
for a purpose which he was quick to divulge. Turning aside Longstreet's
banter, he muttered that the finery was "some doing of my friend Stuart,
The Longest Journey [ 33 ]
I believe," and passed at once to the matter that had brought him here.
He wanted permission to attack. If his men surged down the ridge
and onto the plain before the fog had lifted, he explained, they would be
hidden from the guns on Stafford Heights and could fling the startled
bluecoats into the river. Lee shook his head. He preferred to have the
superior enemy force worn down by repeated charges and repulses, in
the style of Second Manassas, before he passed to the offensive. Stone-
wall had his answer. As he turned to leave, Longstreet began to bait him
again. "General, do not all those multitudes of Federals frighten you?"
Old Peter's humor was heavy-handed, but Jackson had no humor at all.
"We shall see very soon whether I shall not frighten them" he said as
he put one foot in the stirrup. But Longstreet kept at him. "Jackson,
what are you going to do with all those people over there?" Stonewall
mounted. "Sir, we will give them the bayonet," he said, and he turned
his horse and rode away.
By 10 o'clock the fog had begun to thin. It drained downward,
burned away by the sun, layer by upper layer, so that the valley seemed
to empty after the manner of a tub when the plug is pulled. Gradually
the town revealed itself: first the steeples of two churches and the court-
house, then the chimneys and rooftops, and finally the houses and gar-
dens, set upon the checkerboard of streets. Dark lines of troops flowed
steadily toward two clusters, one within the town, masked by the
nearer buildings, the other two miles down the Richmond Stage Road,
which ran parallel to the river and roughly bisected the mile-wide plain.
Already the more adventurous Federal batteries had opened, arching
their shells through sunlit rifts in the thinning mist, but the Confederates
made no reply until 10.30 when Lee passed the word: "Test the ranges
on the left." Longstreet's guns began to roar from Marye's Heights, the
tall north end of the long ridge, directly opposite the center of the town,
where the first of the two clusters of blue-clad men was thickening. All
the fog was gone by now, replaced by brilliant sunlight. The drifting
smoke made shifting patterns on the plain. High over Stafford Heights,
where the long-range guns were adding their deeper voices to the chorus
of the Union, two of Burnside's big yellow observation balloons
bobbed and floated, the men in their swaying baskets looking down on
war reduced to miniature.
First blood was drawn in a brief dramatic action staged in front
of the Confederate right. Here the fog had rolled away so rapidly that
the scene was exposed as if by the sudden lift of a curtain, showing a
three-division Federal corps advancing westward in long lines so neatly
dressed that watchers on the ridge could count the brigades and regi-
ments — ten of the former, forty-six of the latter, plus eleven batteries
of artillery — each with its attendant colors rippling in the sunlight.
From Lee's Hill, the southern commander was surprised to see two
horse-drawn guns, toy-sized in the distance, go twinkling out to the old
[34] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1862
stage road and go into position in the open, within easy range of the left
flank of the 1 8,000 Federals, which was thrown into some disorder and
came to a milling halt as the two guns began to slam their shots endwise
into the blue ranks, toppling men like tenpins.
They had been brought into action by Stuart's chief of artillery,
twenty-four-year-old Major John Pelham of Alabama, who in his haste
to join the southern army had left West Point on the eve of gradua-
tion in '61. He had often done daring things, similar to this today, but
never before with so large an audience to applaud him. As the men of
both armies watched from the surrounding heights, he fired so rapidly
that one general involved in the blue confusion estimated his strength at
a full battery. Four Union batteries gave him their undivided attention,
turning their two dozen guns against his two. One, a rifled Blakely, was
soon disabled and had to be sent to the rear, but Pelham kept the other
barking furiously, a 12 -pounder brass Napoleon, and shifted his posi-
tion each time the enemy gunners got his range. The handsome young
major was in his glory, wearing bound about his cap, at the request of a
British army observer, a necktie woven of red and blue, the colors of
the Grenadier Guards. When Stuart sent word for him to retire, Pelham
declined, though he had lost so many cannoneers by then that he himself
was helping to serve the gun. "Tell the general I can hold my ground,"
he said. Three times the order came, but he obeyed only when his cais-
sons were nearly empty. Back at Hamilton's Crossing, he returned the
smoke-grimed necktie-souvenir to the English visitor, blushing with
pleasure and embarrassment at the cheers. Lee on his hill took his glasses
down, smiling as he exclaimed: "It is glorious to see such courage in
one so young!"
While the Federals remained halted on the plain, recovering the
alignment Pelham had disturbed, their artillery began to pound the lower
ridge in earnest, probing the woods in an attempt to knock out Jackson's
hidden batteries before the battle passed to the infantry. The Confeder-
ate gunners made no reply, being under orders not to disclose their posi-
tions until the enemy came within easy range. At last he did, and the
graybacks got their revenge for the punishment they had had to accept
in silence. When the advance came within 800 yards, all of Stonewall's
guns cut loose at once. The blue flood stopped, flailed ragged along its
forward edge, and then reversed its flow.
The Union guns resumed the argument, having spotted their tar-
gets by the smoke that boiled up through the trees, but the infantry bat-
tle now shifted northward to where the bluecoats had been massing
under cover of the town. At 11.30 they emerged and began to surge
across the plain toward Marye's Heights, less than half a mile away. A
thirty-foot spillway, six feet deep, lay athwart their path, however, and
the rebel gunners caught them close-packed as they funneled onto three
bridges whose planks had been removed but whose stringers had been
The Longest Journey [ 35 ]
left in place, apparently to lure them across in single file. "Hi! Hi! Hi!"
the Federals yelled as they pounded over, taking their losses in order to
gain the cover of a slight roll or "dip" of ground that hid them from
the guns on the heights beyond.
"It appeared to us there was no end of them," a waiting can-
noneer observed. But Longstreet was not worried; he had a surprise in
store for them. Along the base of Marye's Heights ran a road, flanked
by stone walls four feet high, which Brigadier General T.R.R. Cobb
had had his Georgians deepen, throwing the spoil over the townward
wall, to add to its effectiveness as a breastwork and to hide it from the
enemy. This was the advance position of the whole army, and as such
it might be outflanked or enfiladed. However, when Cobb was given
permission to fall back up the hill in case that happened, he replied
grimly in the spirit of Barksdale and Pelham: "Well, if they wait for
me to fall back, they will wait a long time."
Presently he got the chance to begin to prove his staunchness; for
the Federals leaped to their feet in the swale and made a sudden rush,
as if they intended to scale the heights whose base was only 400 yards
away. High up the slope the guns crashed, darting tongues of flame,
and the Georgians along the sunken road pulled trigger. It was as if
the charging bluecoats had struck a trip wire. When the smoke of that
single rifle volley rolled away, all that were left in front of the wall
were writhing on the ground or scampering back to safety in the swale.
After a wait, they rose and came forward again, deploying as they ad-
vanced. This time the reaction was less immediate, since they knew
what to expect; but it was no different in the end. The guns on the
slope and the rifles down along the wall broke into a clattering frenzy of
smoke and flame, and more men were left writhing as others fell back
off the blasted plain and into the swale. Again they rose. Again, incredi-
bly, they charged. They came forward, one of them afterwards recalled,
"as though they were breasting a storm of rain and sleet, their faces
and bodies being only half turned to the storm, with their shoulders
shrugged." Another observed that "everybody, from the smallest drum-
mer boy on up, seemed to be shouting to the full extent of his capacity."
Like the first and second, except that more men fell because it lasted
longer, this third charge broke in blood and pain before a single man
got within fifty yards of the wall. The survivors flowed back over the
roll of earth and into the "dip," where reinforcements were nerving
themselves for still a fourth attempt.
"They are massing very heavily and will break your line, I am
afraid," Lee told Longstreet. But Old Peter did not believe it. He was
ready for the whole Yankee nation, provided it would come at him from
the direction this portion of it had done three times already, and he said
so: "General, if you put every man now on the other side of the Poto-
mac in that field to approach me over that same line, and give me plenty
[}6] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
of ammunition, I will kill them all before they reach my line. Look to
your right; you are in some danger there," he said. "But not on my line."
It was true; Lee's line was in considerable danger southward.
While Sumner's men were charging the sunken road, repeatedly and
headlong, taking their losses, Franklin was taking stock of the situation
as Pelham's brass Napoleon and Jackson's masked batteries had left
it when they disrupted his first and second advances. Both had been
tentative, at best, but now he believed he knew what he had to deal
with. However, as in Pleasant Valley preceding the battle on Antietam
Creek, he was inclined to be circumspect: an inclination which had not
been lessened here on the Rappahannock by Burnside's instructions that,
once he was over the river "with a view to taking the heights," he was
to be "governed by circumstances as to the extent of your movements."
Further instructions had arrived this morning, warning him to keep
his attack column "well supported and its line of retreat open." Ac-
cordingly, before going forward for the third time, he took care to
protect the flank in Stuart's direction. The attack was delivered by the
same corps, commanded by Major General John F. Reynolds, whose
three divisions were under Major General George G. Meade and Briga-
dier Generals Abner Doubleday and John Gibbon. Doubleday was or-
dered to wheel left, guarding the bruised flank (sure enough, Pelham
came out promptly and began to pound him) while the other two went
forward in an attempt to storm the ridge. Gibbon, on the right, got as
far as the railroad embankment, where he ran into murderous point-
blank fire, was himself wounded, and had to be brought out on a
stretcher. He was followed shortly by his men, who were not long in
discovering that the Johnnies had drawn them into a trap.
That left Meade, whose division was the smallest of the three.
Out of 60,000 soldiers available for the intended assault on the Confeder-
ate right, Franklin managed to get only these 4500 Pennsylvanians into
slugging contact with the enemy, but they did what they could to make
up in spirit for what they lacked in weight. Charging first to the rail-
road, then beyond it, they struck a boggy stretch of ground, about
500 yards in width, which A. P. Hill had left unmanned in the belief that
it was impenetrable. It was not. Meade's troops slogged through it,
burst upon and scattered a second-line brigade of startled rebels, and
were still driving hard toward the accomplishment of Franklin's as-
signment — that is, to get astride the lower ridge and then sweep north-
ward along it, dislodging men and guns as he went — when they them-
selves were struck in front and on both flanks by a horde of screaming
graybacks.
These were Early's men, from over on the right. Told that Hill's
line had been pierced, they came on the run, hooting as they passed the
fugitives: "Here comes old Jubal! Let old Jubal straighten out that
The Longest Journey [ 37 ]
fence!" Then they struck. The Pennsylvanians were driven back
through the boggy gap and out again across the open fields, where
the pursuers stabbed vengefully at their rear and Confederate guns to
the left and right tore viciously at their flanks. Unsupported, heavily
outnumbered, thrown off balance by surprise, they paid dearly for their
daring; more than a third of the men who had gone in did not come out
again. There was no safety for the survivors until they regained the cover
of their artillery, which promptly drove the pursuers back with severe
losses and shifted without delay to the rebel batteries, blanketing them
so accurately with shellbursts that the fire drew an indirect compliment
from Pelham himself, who happened to be visiting this part of the line at
the time. "Well, you men stand killing better than any I ever saw/' he
remarked as he watched the cannoneers being knocked about.
At any rate, the break had been repaired, the line restored. Lee on
his hill had seen it all, the penetration and repulse on Jackson's front,
coincident with the bloody disintegration of the third attack on Long-
street. The ground in front of both was carpeted blue with the torn
bodies of men who had challenged unsuccessfully the integrity of his
line. Beyond the river, Stafford Heights were ablaze with guns whose
commanding elevation and heavier metal enabled them to rake the
western ridge almost at will. Even now, one of them put a large-
caliber shell into the earth at the southern commander's feet, but it did
not explode. A British observer saw "antique courage" in Lee's manner
as he turned to Longstreet, lowering his glasses after a long look at the
blasted plain where still more Federals were massing to continue their
assault over the mangled remains of comrades who had tried before
and failed. "It is well that war is so terrible," the gray-bearded general
said. "We should grow too fond of it."
If the assault was to be resumed after the comparative lull that
settled over the field about 3.30, following the double failure at oppo-
site ends of the line, it would have to be launched against that portion
of the ridge where Longstreet's men were ranked four-deep in the
sunken road, their rifles cocked and primed for firing at whatever came
at them across the fields beyond their breast-high wall of stone and dirt.
To the south, Franklin had shot his bolt with Meade's quick probe of the
hole in Jackson's front: in reaction to which he was not unlike a man
who has managed to salvage a good part of one hand after groping
about in the dark and finding a bear trap. There might be other holes,
for all he knew, but after that one costly venture the commander of the
left Grand Division seemed less concerned about finding than he was
about avoiding them. Whoever might deliver another attack, it was not
going to be Franklin. That left Sumner and Hooker. Burnside sent
them instructions to continue the assault with their right and center
[38] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
Grand Divisions, in hopes that the Confederates along the ridge could
be breached or budged or somehow thrown into confusion as a prelude
to their downfall.
Sumner, a crusty veteran of forty-four years' service, nearly
forty of which had been spent accomplishing the slow climb from sec-
ond lieutenant to colonel, was altogether willing, despite his heavy
losses up to now. So was Hooker, whose nickname was "Fighting Joe."
Shortly before 4 o'clock, the men crouched in the swale caught sight
of what they thought was their best chance to storm the ridge. A whole
battalion of rebel artillery began a displacement from the slopes of
Marye's Heights. Quickly the word passed down the Union line; men
braced themselves for the order to charge. It came and they surged
forward, followed this time by several batteries, which ventured out
to within 300 yards of the fuming wall, adding the weight of their metal
to the attack but losing cannoneers so fast that the guns could only be
served slowly. As it turned out, this was worse than ever. The artillery
displacement they had spotted was not the beginning of a retreat, as
they had supposed, but a yielding of the position to a fresh battalion,
which arrived with full caissons in time to aid in contesting this fourth
assault. Down in the sunken road, Tom Cobb had been hit by a sharp-
shooter firing from the upper story of a house on the edge of town; he
had bled to death by now; but his men were still there, reinforced by
several regiments of North Carolinians from Ransom's reserve division.
Shoulder to shoulder along the wall, they loosed their volleys, then
stepped back to reload while the rank behind stepped up to fire. So it
went, through all four ranks, until the first had reloaded and taken its
place along the wall, which flamed continuously under a mounting bank
of smoke as if the defenders were armed with automatic weapons.
This attack, like the three preceding it, broke in blood. The Federals
fell back, leaving the stretch of open ground between the swale and a
hundred yards of the wall thick -strewn with corpses and writhing men
whose cries could be heard above the diminishing clatter of musketry.
While the carnage was being continued here ("Oh, great God!"
a division commander groaned in anguish from his lookout post in the
cupola of the courthouse. "See how our men, our poor fellows, are
falling!") Jackson was burning to take the offensive against the inactive
bluecoats at the other end of the line: so much so, indeed, that according
to one observer "his countenance glowed, as from the glare of a great
conflagration." If all those thousands of Federals on the plain could not
be persuaded to approach the ridge, he ached to go down after them.
"I want to move forward," he said impatiently; "to attack them — drive
them into the river yonder," and as he spoke he threw out his arm, by
way of lending emphasis to his words. The risk was great, he knew, for a
repulse would expose his men to annihilation by the guns on the op-
posite heights. But at last, out of urgency, he devised a plan by which he
The Longest Journey [ 39 ]
hoped to nullify his prediction that the Confederates would "gain no
fruits" from their victory. If the counterstroke were preceded by a
bombardment, he believed, the enemy might be so stunned that the
sudden charge across the plain might be made without undue sacrifice
of life, and if it were launched just at sundown he could withdraw under
cover of darkness in case it failed.
So conceived, it was so ordered. However, the almanac put sun-
set at 4.34; there was little time for preparation. Word was passed to the
four divisions assigned to the attack, and as they got ready for the jump-
off Stonewall's batteries went forward, out into the open, to begin their
work of stunning or confusing the enemy. Instead, it was they who
were stunned and confused, and in short order. Beyond the river, Staf-
ford Heights seemed to buck and jump in flame and thunder as the
guns on the crest redoubled their fire at the sight of these easy targets
down below. Jackson quickly recalled his badly pounded artillerymen
and canceled the attack, which he now saw would be shattered as soon
as the infantry emerged from the woods. At that, the demonstration
was not without its effect: especially on Franklin, who had already noti-
fied Burnside that "any movement to my front is impossible at present.
. . . The truth is, my left is in danger of being turned. What hope is
there of getting reinforcements across the river?" Of his eight divisions,
only three had been employed offensively, and one whole corps of
24,000 men, the largest in the army, saw no action at all; yet he was ask-
ing after reinforcements. At the height of Jackson's abortive demon-
stration, orders came from Burnside for Franklin to take the offensive,
but he declined. He was in grave danger here, he repeated. Besides,
there was no time; the sun was down behind the western ridge.
Sunset did not slow the tempo of the fighting to the north, where
a fifth major assault on Marye's Heights had been repulsed in much the
same manner as all the others, though the officers in charge had at-
tempted a somewhat different approach. Their instructions were for the
men to veer northward when they left the swale and thus confront the
sunken road from the right, which perhaps would enable them to lay
down an enfilade as they gained the flank and bore down at an angle.
But it did not work out that way. As the men went forward, attempting
to bear off to the right, they encountered a marsh that forced them
back to the left and a repetition of the direct approach to the stone wall,
which seemed thus to draw them like a magnet. From behind it, all
this while, the rebels — many of whom were shoeless, without over-
coats or blankets to protect them from the penetrating mid-December
chill — taunted the warmly clad Federals coming toward them in a
tangle-footed huddle after their encounter with the bog: "Come on,
blue belly! Bring them boots and blankets! Bring 'em hyar!" And they
did bring them, up to within fifty yards of the flame-stitched wall at
any rate. There the forward edge of the charge was frayed and broken,
Uo] THE CIVIL WAR3T1862
the survivors crawling or running to regain the protection of the
swale, which by now they were convinced they never should have left.
Sumner had done his best, or worst, but the carnage was by no
means over. Hooker's men had crossed the river, under orders to con-
tinue the assault, and the commander of one of his divisions, Brigadier
General Andrew Humphreys, believed he knew a way to get his troops
up to and over the wall, so they could come to grips with the jeering
scarecrows in the sunken road. While they were deploying in the dusk
he rode among them, telling them not to fire while they were charging.
It was obvious by now, he said, that firing did the rebels little damage
behind their ready-made breastwork; it only served to slow the attack
and expose the attackers to more of the rapid-fire volleys from beyond
the wall. The object was to get there fast — much as a man might
hurry across an open space in a shower of rain, intending to be as dry
as possible when he reached the other side — then rely on the bayonet
to do the work that would remain to be done when they got there.
They went forward in the twilight, stumbling over the human
wreckage left by five previous charges. Prone men, wounded and
unwounded, called out to them not to try it; some even caught at
their legs as they passed, attempting to hold them back; but they
ignored them and went on, beckoned by voices that mocked them from
ahead, calling them blue-bellies and urging them to bring their boots
and blankets within reach. Humphreys sat his horse amid the bullets, a
slim veteran of aristocratic mien. He had left West Point in '31, two
years behind R. E. Lee, and his record in the peacetime army had been
a good one; yet his advancement since then, it was said, had been de-
layed because of suspicions aroused by his prewar friendship with Jef-
ferson Davis. Now he was out to prove those suspicions false. As he
watched he saw the stone wall become "a sheet of flame that enveloped
the head and flanks of the column." Its formations unraveled by sudden
attrition, the charge was brought to a stumbling halt about forty yards
from the wall. For a moment the Federals hung there, beginning to
return the galling fire; but it was useless, and they knew it. Despite the
shouts and pleas of their officers — including Humphreys, who re-
mained mounted yet incredibly went unhit — the men turned and stum-
bled back through the gathering darkness. Or anyhow the survivors did,
having added a thousand casualties to the wreckage that cluttered the
open slope, ghastly under the pinkish yellow flicker of muzzle-flashes
still rippling back and forth along the crest of the stone wall.
"The fighting is about over," a Union signal officer reported at
6 o'clock from the heights across the way; "only an occasional gun is
heard."
It was over, as he said, but not as the result of instructions from
Burnside. Hooker was the one who finally called a halt to the carnage.
The Longest Journey [ 41 ]
"Finding that I had lost as many men as my orders required me to lose,"
he later declared in his official report, "I suspended the attack."
Burnside himself took a much less gloomy view of the state of
affairs when he crossed the river late that night for an inspection of the
front. Unquestionably a great deal of blood had been shed — far more,
in fact, than he would know until he received the final casualty returns
— but he had little doubt that a continuation of today's work would
break Lee's line tomorrow. At any rate he was determined to try it,
and he sent out orders to that effect, alerting his front-line com-
manders. Recrossing the Rappahannock at 4 o'clock in the morning, he
got off a wire to Washington: "I have just returned from the field. Our
troops are all over the river. We hold the first ridge outside the town,
and 3 miles below. We hope to carry the crest today."
* * *
Once more Lee had divined his opponent's purpose. "I expect the
battle to be renewed at daylight," he wired Richmond, three hours after
the final assault had failed, and this opinion was reinforced within an-
other three hours by the capture, shortly before midnight, of a courier
bearing orders to Burnside's front-line commanders for tomorrow's
continuation of the attack. But Sunday's dawn, December 14, brought
only the soup-thick fog of yesterday, without the familiar hum of
preparation from down on the curtained plain. Indeed, even after the
rising sun had burned away the mist, the only change apparent to the
eye was in the lines along the western ridge. Expecting a turning move-
ment, Lee had instructed his men to improve their fortifications in or-
der to free all but a comparative handful for action on the flanks. So
well had they plied their tools, these soldiers who six months ago had
sneered at digging as cowardly work "unfit for a white man" and in
derision had dubbed their new commander "the King of Spades," that
Lee remarked with pleasure at the sight: "My army is as much
stronger for these new intrenchments as if I had received reinforce-
ments of 20,000 men."
No longer in need of prodding, or even suggestion, they kept
digging. As the sun rose higher, so did the parapets. But the observers
on Lee's Hill discerned no corresponding activity among the Federals
on the plain, portions of whose forward edge were carpeted solid blue
with the thick-fallen dead and wounded. The only sign of preparation
was that the near ends of the east-west streets of Fredericksburg had
been barricaded, as if in expectation of receiving, not delivering, an at-
tack. The morning wore on. Noon came and went: then afternoon:
and still no sign that the bluecoats were about to launch the assault that
had been ordered in the dispatch captured the night before. As the
shadows lengthened, Lee turned at last to Longstreet, who had been ac-
[42] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
quainted with the northern commander in the peacetime army. "Gen-
eral," he said, "I am losing faith in your friend General Burnside."
He was by no means alone in this, although the principal loss of
faith in Old Peter's friend had occurred within the luckless com-
mander's own ranks. Refreshed by a short sleep, and still convinced that
he would break Lee's line by continuing yesterday's headlong tactics,
Burnside had risen early that morning, only to be confronted by Sum-
ner, who had been five years in the army before his present chief was
born. He was known to be no quitter; in fact, so pronounced was his
fondness for personal combat, Burnside had ordered the old man to re-
main at his left-bank headquarters yesterday, lest he get himself killed
leading charges. Today, though, he was quite unlike himself in this
respect.
"General," he said, obviously unstrung by all he had seen the day
before, if only from a distance, "I hope you will desist from this attack.
I do not know of any general officer who approves of it, and I think
it will prove disastrous to the army."
Burnside was taken aback, having expected to encounter a dif-
ferent spirit. However, as he later wrote, "Advice of that kind from
General Sumner, who had always been in favor of an advance when-
ever it was possible, caused me to hesitate." To his further dismay, he
found his other Grand Division commanders of the same opinion.
Franklin did not surprise him greatly in this regard — ironically, that
general had served him on the left at Fredericksburg in much the same
fashion as he himself had served McClellan on the left at Antietam —
but when Hooker, the redoubtable Fighting Joe, was even more em-
phatic than Sumner in advising no renewal of the attack, he knew the
thing was off. His first reaction was one of frantic despair. He had a
wild impulse to place himself at the head of his old corps and lead an all-
out, all-or-nothing charge against the sunken road, intending to break
Lee's line or else be broken by it. Dissuaded from this, he retired to his
tent, bitter with the knowledge that all yesterday's blood had been shed
to no advantage: except to the rebels, who would be facing that many
fewer men next time the two armies came to grips. A corps com-
mander, Major General W. F. Smith, followed him into the tent and
found him pacing back and forth, distracted. "Oh, those men! Oh, those
men!" he was saying. What men? Smith asked, and Burnside replied:
"Those men over there," pointing across the river, where portions of
the plain were carpeted blue: "I am thinking of them all the time! "
Sunset closed a day that had witnessed nothing more than a bit of
long-range firing on one side and a great deal of digging on the other.
Such spectacle as there was, and it was much, came after nightfall. A
mysterious refulgence, shot with fanwise shafts of varicolored light,
predominantly reds and blues — first a glimmer, then a spreading
glow, as if all the countryside between Fredericksburg and Washing-
The Longest Journey [ 43 ]
ton were afire — filled a wide arc of the horizon beyond the Federal
right. It was the aurora borealis, seldom visible this far south and
never before seen by most of the Confederates, who watched it with
amazement. The Northerners might make of it what they chose by way
of a portent (after all, these were the Northern Lights) but to one
Southerner it seemed "that the heavens were hanging out banners and
streamers and setting off fireworks in honor of our great victory."
As if to rival this gaudy nighttime aerial display, morning
brought a terrestrial phenomenon, equally amazing in its way. The
ground in front of the sunken road, formerly carpeted solid blue, had
taken on a mottled hue, with patches of startling white. Binoculars dis-
closed the cause. Many of the Federal dead had been stripped stark
naked by shivering Confederates, who had crept out in the darkness to
scavenge the warm clothes from the bodies of men who needed them no
longer.
That afternoon, as a result of a request by Burnside for a truce
during which he could bury his dead and relieve such of his wounded
as had survived two days and nights of exposure without medicine for
their hurts or water for their fever-parched throats, the men of both ar-
mies had a nearer view of the carnage. No one assigned to one of the
burial details ever forgot the horror of what he saw; for here, close-up
and life-size, was an effective antidote to the long-range, miniature
pageantry of Saturday's battle as it had been viewed from the opposing
heights. Up close, you heard the groans and smelled the blood. You
saw the dead. According to one who moved among them, they were
"swollen to twice their natural size, black as Negroes in most cases."
They sprawled "in every conceivable position, some on their backs with
gaping jaws, some with eyes as large as walnuts, protruding with glassy
stare, some doubled up like a contortionist." Here, he wrote — ap-
proaching incoherency as the memory grew stronger — lay "one with-
out a head, there one without legs, yonder a head and legs without a
trunk; everywhere horrible expressions, fear, rage, agony, madness, tor-
ture; lying in pools of blood, lying with heads half buried in mud, with
fragments of shell sticking in oozing brain, with bullet holes all over the
puffed limbs."
Not even amid such scenes as this, however, did the irrepressible
rebel soldier's wry sense of humor — or anyhow what passed for such;
mainly it was a biting sense of the ridiculous — desert him. One, about
to remove a shoe from what he thought was a Federal corpse, was sur-
prised to see the "corpse" lift its head and look at him reproachfully.
"Beg pardon, sir," the would-be scavenger said, carefully lowering the
leg; "I thought you had gone above." Another butternut scarecrow,
reprimanded by a Union officer for violating the terms of the truce by
picking up a fine Belgian rifle that had been dropped between the lines,
looked his critic up and down, pausing for a long stare at the polished
[44] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
boots the officer was wearing. "Never mind," he said dryly. "I'll
shoot you tomorrow and git them boots."
So he said. But as the thing turned out, neither he nor anyone else
was going to be doing any shooting on that field tomorrow: not unless
the Confederates started shooting at each other. Night brought a storm
of sleet and driving rain, with a hard wind blowing eastward off the
ridge and toward the river. When the fog of December 1 6 rolled away,
the plain was empty. A hurried and red-faced investigation disclosed the
fact that not a single live, unwounded Federal remained on the west
bank of the Rappahannock. Covered by darkness, the sound of their
movements drowned by the howling wind, the bluecoats had made a
successful withdrawal in the night, taking up their pontoons after such a
good job of salvaging equipment that one signal officer proudly re-
ported that he had not left a yard of wire behind.
Burnside was distressed that a campaign which had opened so
auspiciously should have so ignominious a close. What was more, reports
of the battle were appearing by now in the northern papers, and the
correspondents, ignoring the general's plea that they not treat "the affair
at Fredericksburg" as a disaster, pulled out all the descriptive stops and
figuratively threw up their hands in horror at the bungling and the
bloodshed. An account in the New York Times so infuriated Burnside
that he summoned the reporter to his tent and threatened to run him
through with his sword. By ordinary a mild-natured man, he was sour-
ing under the goads of criticism, such as those made by two of his own
colonels: one that he and his men had been committed piecemeal —
"handed in on toasting forks," he phrased it — and the other that the
defeat had been "owing to the heavy fire in front and an excess of en-
thusiasm in the rear." Nor was his temper soothed when he read such
comments as the following, from an Ohio journal: "It can hardly be in
human nature for men to show more valor, or generals to manifest less
judgment, than were perceptible on our side that day."
In truth, the casualties were staggering: especially by contrast.
The Federals had lost 12,653 men, the Confederates well under half as
many: 5309. The latter figure was subsequently adjusted to 4201, just
under one third of the former, when it was found that more than a
thousand of those reported missing or wounded had taken advantage of
the chance at a Christmas holiday immediately after the battle.
Longstreet was not unhappy with the results, despite the blood-
less withdrawal. Suffering fewer than 2000 casualties, he had inflicted
about 9000, and he was looking forward to a repetition of the tactics
which had made this exploit possible. But Jackson, whose losses were not
much less than his opponent's on the right, was far from satisfied, even
though 11,000 stands of arms had been gleaned from the field after the
departure of the Yankees. "I did not think a little red earth would
have frightened them," he said. "I am sorry they are gone. I am sorry
The Longest Journey [ 45 ]
that I fortified. " Lee agreed, saying of Burnside and the punishment
that general had absorbed: "Had I divined that was to have been his
only effort, he would have had more of it."
That evening he wrote his wife, "They went as they came — in
the night. They suffered heavily as far as the battle went, but it did not
go far enough to satisfy me." His anger had been aroused by the evi-
dence of rabid vandalism he saw when he rode into Fredericksburg that
afternoon. So had Jackson's. "What can we do?" a staff officer asked
helplessly when he saw how thoroughly the Federals had taken the
town apart. "Do?" Stonewall replied promptly. "Why, shoot them."
The stern-lipped Jackson's ire would never cool (later he ex-
panded this remark; "We must do more than defeat their armies," he
said. "We must destroy them") but Lee's was influenced considerably by
the advent of the season of the Nativity. On Christmas Day he wrote
his wife: "My heart is filled with gratitude to Almighty God for His un-
speakable mercies with which He has blessed us in this day, for those He
has granted us from the beginning of life, and particularly for those He
has vouchsafed us during the past year. What should have become of us
without His crowning help and protection? Oh, if our people would
only realize it and cease from vain self-boasting and adulation, how
strong would be my belief in final success and happiness to our coun-
try! But what a cruel thing is war; to separate and destroy families
and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us
in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neigh-
bors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. I pray that,
on this day when only peace and good-will are preached to mankind,
better thoughts may fill the hearts of our enemies and turn them to
peace." But he added a sort of postscript in a letter to his youngest
daughter, remarking that he was "happy in the knowledge that General
Burnside and his army will not eat their promised Christmas dinner in
Richmond today."
X 3 X
Near the far end of the thousand-mile-long firing line that swerved and
crooked its way between North and South — westward across north-
ern Virginia, East and Middle Tennessee, North Mississippi, central
Arkansas, and thence on out to Texas — Theophilus Holmes, with less
rank and not one half as many soldiers in a department better than
twenty times as large, had troubles which, in multiplicity at any rate,
made Lee's seem downright single. From his Transmississippi headquar-
ters in Little Rock the lately appointed North Carolinian looked appre-
hensively north and west and south; he was threatened from all those
quarters; while from the east he was being jogged by repeated pleas and
[46] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
suggestions from Johnston and the President, not to mention such com-
paratively minor figures as Pemberton and the Secretary of War, that
he send his hard-pressed and outnumbered troops to the aid of his fel-
low department commander on the opposite bank of the big river that
ran between them. A grim-featured man, deaf as a post, at fifty-seven
Holmes was the oldest of the Confederate field commanders. Moreover,
his rigidity of face, indicative of arteriosclerosis, was matched by a rigid-
ity of mind which augured ill in a situation that called for nothing so
much as it called for flexibility.
By way of compensation for this drawback, he had under him
three major generals whose outstanding characteristic, individually and
collectively, was the very flexibility he lacked. John Magruder, Richard
Taylor, and Thomas Hindman, respectively in charge of Texas, West
Louisiana, and Arkansas, were remarkable men, battle tested and of
proved resourcefulness. In this regard the last was not the least accom-
plished of the three. A prewar Helena lawyer, thirty-four years old,
Hindman had preceded his present chief to his home state, and within
six months of his arrival in late May, stepping into the vacuum left by
Van Dorn's April crossing of the Mississippi with all the men and
weapons that could be salvaged from the defeat at Elkhorn Tavern, had
created and equipped, by strict enforcement of the new conscription act
and the establishment of factories and foundries where none had been
before, an army of 20,000 recruits, armed and uniformed more or less
in accordance with regulations and supported by 46 guns. This in itself
was about as close to a miracle of improvised logistics as any general
ever came in the whole war, but Hindman expected to accomplish a
great deal more before he was through. Dapper, jaunty, dandified, ad-
dicted to patent leather boots and rose-colored kidskin gloves, frilled
shirt fronts and a rattan cane, perhaps by way of compensation for his
Napoleonic five feet two of height, he was accustomed to getting what
he wanted, whether it was a fine brick house, a seat in Congress, or a
wife whose father had sought to keep her from him by locking her
away in a convent: all of which he had won, despite the odds, by ex-
tending his credit, demolishing opponents from the stump, and scaling
the convent wall. What he had in mind just now, though, was not only
the scourging of all bluecoats from the soil of Arkansas — including
Helena, where the Federal commander of the force in occupation had
taken over the fine brick house for his headquarters — but also the re-
covery of Missouri.
Arriving in mid- August to find the diminutive Arkansan already
far along with his plans, Holmes had been infected by his enthusiasm
and had approved his preparations for a counterinvasion. It was gotten
under way at once. By October Hindman's advance, a combined com-
mand of cavalry and Indians, was across the Missouri border, but suf-
fered a repulse at the hands of a superior Union force under Brigadier
The Longest Journey [ 47 ]
General John M. Schofield, in command of three divisions styled the
Army of the Frontier. The Indians scattered like chaff before a fan, and
the cavalry fell back to the security of the Boston Mountains, skir-
mishing as they went. Hindman, coming forward to Fort Smith with
the main body, was not discouraged by this turn of events. Indeed, as he
saw it, the Federals were being lured to their destruction in the wilds of
northwest Arkansas. Accordingly, he crossed the Arkansas river and
concentrated his infantry at Van Buren. All he wanted, he told Holmes,
was a chance to hit the Yankees with something approaching equal
strength, after which he would "move into Missouri, take Springfield,
and winter on the Osage at least."
Presently he got that chance, and at odds considerably better than
he had dared even to hope for. Schofield, believing in mid-November
that hostilities had ended for the winter, left the largest of his three
divisions near Fayetteville under Brigadier General James G. Blunt, with
the assignment of blocking the path of another Confederate incursion,
and withdrew to Springfield with the other two, which he placed un-
der Brigadier General Francis J. Herron while he himself took off on
sick leave. Hindman, with a mobile force of 11,500 men and 22 guns,
was preparing to take advantage of this chance to strike at Blunt, who
had 7000 men and 20 guns, when word came from Holmes (who by
now had received instructions from the Secretary of War, urging the
necessity for reinforcing Vicksburg) for him to return posthaste to Little
Rock with all his men, in preparation for an eastward march across the
Mississippi. Hindman protested for all he was worth. To fall back would
cost him heavily in desertions, he knew, since many of his conscripts
were natives of the region through which they would be retreating.
Besides, he told Holmes, "to withdraw without fighting at all would
... so embolden the enemy as to insure his following me up." With-
out waiting for a reply he put his army in motion on December 3, in-
tending to precede the retrograde movement with an advance and a vic-
tory that would leave the Federals in no condition to pursue. Slogging
next day through the brushy Boston Mountains, the highest and most
rugged section of the Ozark chain, he printed and distributed an ad-
dress to his soldiers, designed to steel their arms for the strike at Blunt.
"Remember that the enemy you engage has no feeling of mercy or kind-
ness toward you," he told them. "His ranks are made up of Pin In-
dians, free negroes, Southern tories, Kansas jayhawkers, and hired
Dutch cut-throats. These bloody ruffians have invaded your country;
stolen and destroyed your property; murdered your neighbors; out-
raged your women; driven your children from their homes, and defiled
the graves of your kindred. If each man of you will do what I have here
urged upon you, we will utterly destroy them."
Blunt now had his troops in bivouac about twenty miles south-
west of Fayetteville, near the hamlet of Cane Hill, from which he had
[48
THE CIVIL WAR^r 1862
Springfield/
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driven the grayback cavalry that week. When he got word that Hind-
man was across the Arkansas with an estimated 25,000 men he reacted
according to his nature, rejecting the notion of retreat. A Maine-born
Kansan who had practiced medicine en route in Ohio, he was a militant
abolitionist and a graduate of the border wars. Round-faced, stocky,
pugnacious in manner, he was thirty-six years old and no part of his
training had prepared him for running from rebels, whatever their num-
bers. Determined to hold his ground, he wired for reinforcements and
began to organize his position for defense.
The trouble with this was
that the only reinforcements
available were the two small divi-
sions under Herron, a scant 6000
men with 2 2 guns, and they were
back near Springfield, well over
a hundred miles away, whereas
Hindman's camp at Van Buren
was little more than a third that
distance from Cane Hill, so that
the chances were strong that the
rebels would arrive before the re-
inforcements did. However, this
was leaving two factors out of
account. The first was that Hind-
man's route of march lay through
the mountains; his men would be
climbing and descending about
as much as they would be ad-
vancing along the rugged trails.
The other factor was Frank Her-
ron. An adopted Iowan, already
in command of two divisions at
the age of twenty-five, he intended to accomplish a great deal more in
the way of fulfilling his military ambitions before returning to civilian
life as head of the Dubuque bank established for him by his wealthy
Pennsylvania parents. Just now, more than anything, he wanted a chance
to command those two divisions in actual battle, and he got it much
sooner than he had expected. At 8 o'clock on the morning of December
3 — by which hour, unknown to him or Blunt, Hindman had put his
army on the road for its trek across the Boston Mountains — Herron
received the summons from Cane Hill, one hundred and thirty miles
from his present camp on the somber fields where the Battle of Wilson's
Creek had been fought and lost by Nathaniel Lyon, almost a year and a
half ago. Drums and bugles sounded assembly and the men fell in to re-
ceive instructions for the march. It would be made without tents or bag-
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The Longest Journey [ 49 ]
gage, they were told, except for knapsacks which would be hauled in
wagons. By noon they were headed south, and before they stopped at
dawn next morning, slogging at route step down the pike, they had
made twenty miles. After a short rest they were off again. Across the
state line on December 5, munching hardtack and raw bacon as they
walked, they skirted the granite slopes of Pea Ridge and saw the nine-
months-old scars on the Elkhorn Tavern, where Van Dorn had come to
grief. At midnight the following day, having covered better than one
hundred blistering miles of road, the head of the column entered Fayette-
ville, where the weary marchers slept in the streets, sprawled around fires
they kindled and fed by ripping pickets from front-yard fences. Another
twenty miles tomorrow and they would be at Cane Hill with Blunt,
ready for whatever came at them from beyond the mountains whose
foothills they could presently see by the glimmer of dawn on Sunday,
December 7.
The first sign they had that they were not going to make it — at
least not on schedule — came later that morning, twelve miles down
the pike, when they encountered long-range cannonfire as they were
approaching Illinois Creek. Soon they saw that the Confederates had
drawn a line of battle around the hilltop village of Prairie Grove, a
couple of miles beyond the creek, blocking the path of the road-worn
bluecoats eight miles short of their goal. Herron shook out a regiment
of skirmishers and advanced them to the protection of the creekbank,
where to his horror he discovered that his men were so weary that
once they were off their feet they promptly dropped to sleep with rebel
shells and bullets whistling and twittering over their heads. Undaunted,
he built up his firing line and put his batteries in position, partly by way
of returning the hostile fire, but mostly by way of letting Blunt know
from the racket that he had arrived, or almost arrived, and needed
help. The trouble was, with all those graybacks swarming in his front,
he was not even sure that Blunt and his men were still in existence. For
all he knew, Hindman might have gobbled them up while he himself
was on the march from Wilson's Creek.
Hindman had not gobbled up Blunt; he had gone around him.
Approaching Cane Hill late the afternoon before, after a march
across the shoulder of the mountains in weather so cold that water froze
in the men's canteens and icicles tinkled on the beards of the horses,
he had put his troops in position for a dawn attack, only to learn that
Herron was on the way, already approaching Fayetteville with a force
which, once it was joined to Blum's, would give the Federals the ad-
vantage of numbers, both in men and guns. In command of a brigade at
Shiloh, where he had been wounded and commended for gallantry,
Hindman decided to profit from the example of that battle by prevent-
ing what had caused its loss, the arrival of Buell after Grant had
been pushed to the edge of desperation. That is, he would strike at the
5<>
THE CIVIL WAR»" 1862
reinforcements first, then turn on the main body. Accordingly, he
built up the campfires along his outpost line, left a skeleton brigade of
cavalry to keep up the bluff next morning, and set off after moonset on
a circuitous march with 10,000 men to intercept and defeat the blue
column hurrying southward out of Fayetteville. That was how it
came about that Herron encountered long-range cannonfire at the
crossing of Illinois Creek and the bristling line of battle at Prairie Grove,
eight miles short of a junction with Blunt at Cane Hill.
Blunt had spent the morning in constant expectation of being
swamped by the rebels maneuvering boldly to his front, apparently in
overwhelming numbers. Near noon, however, hearing the sudden boom
of guns from across the hills to his left rear, he realized that he had
been outflanked; whereupon he fell back hastily to Rhea's Mills, six
miles north, in order to protect his trains. Finding them secure he turned
southeast in the direction of the booms and at 4 o'clock reached Prairie
Grove, where he came upon the battle still in full swing after nearly
five hours of doubtful contest. Two rounds from his lead battery an-
nounced his arrival — announced it all too emphatically, in fact, for both
shots landed among Herron's skirmishers, causing them to think that
they were being flanked by their foes instead of being supported by
their friends. Herron had been holding his own despite the weariness of
his foot-sore men. Two charges against the ridge had failed, breaking in
blood against the rim of the rebel horseshoe line, but Hindman had
had no better luck in attempting a counterattack with his green con-
scripts, who fell apart whenever he ordered them forward. The fight-
ing continued, left and right, muzzle flashes stabbing the early darkness.
Despite their superiority of numbers, especially in guns — 42 to 22, now
that the Union forces were united — Blunt's fresh troops could make no
more of a penetration of the rebel line than Herron's weary ones had
been able to achieve. Gradually the firing died to a sputter. Then it
stopped. The battle was over.
Losses in killed, wounded, and missing totaled 13 17 for the Con-
federates and 1251 for the Federals. Of the latter only 333 were from
Blunt's command, indicating how much heavier a proportion of the con-
flict Herron's men had borne, despite the fact that both laid claim to a
lion's share in having brought the victory about. Hindman's only
claim in that respect was the not inconsiderable one that he had man-
aged to hold his ground throughout the fighting. Whether he had also
accomplished his main objective — to shock the enemy into immobility,
escaping pursuit while he fell back southward in compliance with the
previous orders from Holmes — would soon be known; for he retreated
that night under cover of darkness, wrapping the iron tires of his gun
and caisson wheels with blankets to muffle the sound of his with-
drawal. The ruse worked, and so did another he tried next morning.
Not only did Blunt not hear him go, but at dawn he also granted a
The Longest Journey [ 51 ]
request for a truce, which Hindman sent forward under a white flag, to
allow for tending the wounded and burying the dead. Discovering pres-
ently that the Confederate main body had departed in the night, Blunt
canceled the truce, on grounds that the rebels were gleaning abandoned
arms from the field, and prepared to follow. By that time, however,
Schofield was on the scene. Up from his sickbed and furious that his
army had been committed to battle in his absence, he censured both com-
manders: Blunt for not withdrawing to meet the reinforcements hurry-
ing toward him, and Herron for attacking with troops so badly blown
that some of them were found dead on the field, not from wounds but
from exhaustion and exposure after their long march from Wilson's
Creek. If Schofield's purpose in this was to prevent his subordinates'
advancement by discrediting their valor, that purpose failed. By way of
showing its appreciation for a victory won by northern arms as the
year drew to a close — a victory which presently shone the brighter by
contrast with the several full-scale disasters that developed elsewhere
along the thousand-mile-long firing line before the month was out —
the government promptly awarded major general's stars not only to
Blunt but also to Herron, who then succeeded Lew Wallace as the
youngest man to hold that rank in the U.S. Army. Moreover, as soon as
these promotions came through, both men would outrank their pres-
ent commander.
Hindman's discomfort was considerably increased in late Decem-
ber, when Schofield finally unleashed his cavalry for a forced march
against the Confederates who, down to about 4000 men as a result of
straggling and desertions, had taken sanctuary behind the Arkansas
River. Three days after Christmas the blue riders struck Van Buren,
destroying five steamboats at the wharf and all of the supplies of corn
and bacon Hindman had gathered over the months in order to keep his
army from starvation. Once more he was thrown into dispirited retreat,
losing still more soldiers as he went. The Federals withdrew to Fayette-
ville, and thence on back to comfortable winter quarters in Missouri,
but now there was no question of Hindman's returning to Little Rock
with the prospect of marching his army to the relief of Vicksburg.
Practically speaking he had no army. So much of it as did not lie in
shallow graves at Prairie Grove was scattered over northern Arkansas,
hiding from conscription agents in Ozark coves and valleys.
Thus it was that the battle lost in northwest Arkansas had reper-
cussions far beyond the theater it was fought in. Holmes had opposed the
eastward transfer from the start, protesting that the march led through
a region barren of supplies and would require no less than thirty days.
"Solemnly, under the circumstances," he had informed the Adjutant
General earlier that month, "I regard the movement ordered as equiva-
lent to abandoning Arkansas." All the same, against his better judgment,
he had been preparing to go along with the plan. But now, with Hind-
[52] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
man's army practically out of existence and only the local reserves to
protect Little Rock itself against an advance from occupied Helena, he
had what he considered the best of specific reasons for declining to com-
ply with the government's wishes. On December 29, the day after
Schofield's cavalry hit Van Buren, he wrote Johnston in reply to the
correspondence the President had forwarded from Vicksburg during his
inspection of that place the week before: "My information from
Helena is to the effect that a heavy force of the enemy has passed down
the Mississippi on transports. . . . Thus it seems very certain that any
force I can now send from here would not be able to reach Vicksburg,
and if at all not before such a reinforcement would be useless, while
such a diversion would enable the enemy to penetrate those portions
of the Arkansas Valley where the existence of supplies of subsistence
and forage would afford them leisure to overrun the entire state and
gradually reduce the people to . . . dependence."
It was bad enough that the Yankees were steaming down the
Mississippi, but they were also steaming up it — simultaneously. Banks
had reoccupied Baton Rouge in mid-December and now was giving
every sign that he intended to continue the northward penetration,
shortening the stretch of river necessarily rebel-held if Holmes was to
keep open the supply lines vital to the feeding and reinforcement, if not
indeed to the survival, of all the armies of the South. Since the loss of
the armed ram Arkansas, three months back, the Confederacy had had
no vestige of a navy with which to oppose this two-pronged challenge
designed for her riving and destruction; the threat would have to be
stopped, if at all, not on the river itself, but from its banks. On the east
bank the responsibility was Pemberton's, and to help him meet it he had
two stout high-ground bastions one hundred air-line miles apart, com-
manding bends of the river at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. On the west
bank it was Richard Taylor's, who had nothing: not only no lofty for-
tresses bristling with heavy-caliber guns emplaced to blow the Union
ironclads out of the water, but also no army. In fact, on his arrival from
Virginia in late August, he had found that his total force consisted of
two troops of home-guard cavalry, a scattering of guerillas hidden
from friends and foes in the moss-hung swamps and bayous, and a
battalion of mounted infantry just arrived from Texas — in all, fewer
than 2000 effectives for the defense of the whole Department of
Louisiana. Nonetheless, Holmes had confidence that this second of his
three major generals would be ingenious and tireless in his efforts to
reduce the nearly immeasurable odds, and this confidence was not mis-
placed.
Commander of a division used as shock troops by Stonewall
Jackson throughout the Shenandoah Valley campaign, Taylor had been
The Longest Journey [ 53 ]
one of the stars of that amazing chapter in military history, and had
found in that experience ample compensation for his lack of formal
training in the art of war. Gripped on the eve of the Seven Days by a
strange paralysis of the legs, vvhich seemed to portend the close of a
promising career and a denial of any further share in winning his coun-
try's independence, this son of Zachary Taylor had recovered in time to
receive his present assignment, together with a promotion, from his
brother-in-law Jefferson Davis. Happy over what in fact would be a
home-coming, for he had commanded Louisianians in the Valley and had
spent his antebellum years on a Louisiana plantation, he came West with
an enthusiasm that was only slightly dampened by the discovery of con-
ditions in his new department, as of August 20, when he established
headquarters in Alexandria. Undismayed by the shortage of soldiers,
which kept him from any immediate accomplishment of big things —
such as the retaking of New Orleans, which was very much a part of
his plans for the future — he decided to be content at first with small
ones. Within two weeks of his arrival he mounted a surprise attack that
captured a four-gun battery and two companies of infantry at Bayou
des Allemands, a Federal post near his plantation home, fifty miles
downriver from Donaldsonville and less than half that far above New
Orleans. If he could not retake the Crescent City just yet, he could at
least draw near it — and profitably, too.
Slight though it was, this first success gained locally by Confed-
erate arms in the four months since the fall of the South's first city was
heartening indeed to the people of the district. Not even the recapture
of the post in late October, when the resurgent Louisianians were
driven away by a Federal amphibious force that included four regiments
of infantry and a quartet of light-draft gunboats, detracted from the
brilliance of that first strike. What was more, Taylor was planning
others of still larger scope. Denied access to the Lafourche, that fertile
region lying between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya, he moved into
the Teche country, which lay between the Atchafalaya basin and the
Gulf of Mexico, and here, despite the fact that his government, as he
said, "had no soldiers, no arms or munitions, and no money within
the limits of the district," he set about the task of raising, equipping,
and training the army with which he hoped, in time, not only to capture
but also to hold the series of fortified posts that blocked the path be-
tween him and his goal, New Orleans. Meanwhile, intent on preventing
further enemy penetrations, he had to disperse what forces he had in
order to meet threats from all directions. With few trained subordinates
and almost no telegraph or railway lines, the problem of central con-
trol was well-nigh insoluble. However, now that December had come
on and the year drew toward a close, Taylor went far toward solving it.
By using relays of fast-stepping mules and an ambulance in which he
could sleep while traveling, the thirty-six-year-old general managed
[54] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
to employ what might have been his immobile hours for visits to the
various scattered points in his large department. "Like the Irishman's
bird," he subsequently wrote, "I almost succeeded in being in two
places at the same time."
In this respect, as well as in several others, he was easily dis-
tinguishable from his opposite number, the newly arrived commander
of all the Union forces in the region. Ten years Taylor's senior, of hum-
bler birth but with much larger accomplishments in public life, having
been a three-term governor of Massachusetts and speaker of the na-
tional House of Representatives, Nathaniel Banks was nothing like the
Irishman's bird and had nothing like his opponent's nighttime mobil-
ity — though the fact was, he had perhaps an even greater need for it if
he was to carry out the multiple assignment given him by his superiors
when he set out from Hampton Roads on his voyage down and around
the coast to relieve his fellow Bay State politician, Benjamin Butler, as
military ruler of New Orleans and commander of the Department of
the Gulf. Vicksburg and Mobile were his primary objectives, he was
told, and after the fall of the former place had opened the Mississippi to
Union traffic throughout its length he was to move up the Red in order
to gain control of northern Louisiana and, eventually, Texas. It was a
large order, particularly for a general who not only had not a single
battlefield victory to his credit, but rather had been whipped twice al-
ready in open contest — once at Winchester, in the Shenendoah Valley,
and again at Cedar Mountain, both times by Stonewall Jackson, whose
lean marchers had captured so many of his supplies that they had dubbed
him "Commissary" Banks — but he apparently had no doubt that it
could be filled and that he was the man to fill it. He docked at New
Orleans, December 14, and took over formally next day from Butler,
who issued an address to his army — "I greet you, my brave comrades,
and say farewell!" it began, and ended: "Farewell, my comrades! Again,
Farewell!" — and promptly departed for Washington to take the gov-
ernment to task for having made what seemed to him an improvident
substitution.
Banks wasted no time on speeches. On the day he took command
he issued orders for one of the divisions he had brought along to proceed
at once upriver, without unloading from its transports, and to reoccupy
Baton Rouge, which Butler had abandoned after repulsing an all-out
attack on the place in early August. Two days later, when the Louisi-
ana capital fell without even a show of resistance, Banks was greatly
pleased at having made so prompt and effective a beginning toward ful-
filling his government's outsized expectations. Including the reinforce-
ments still arriving after their long voyage from New York and Fort
Monroe, he had 36,508 effectives in his department, exclusive of navy
personnel, and he felt that these were ample for the accomplishment of
his task. What was more, he reported that he had found in Farragut, who
The Longest Journey [ 55 ]
was to be his partner in continuing the bold upriver thrust, a sailor who
was "earnest for work." After a conference with the Tennessee-born
admiral he added that he was delighted with his enthusiasm and frank-
ness, and that he looked forward to "a most satisfactory result from our
mutual labors." Banks was feeling chipper, and he said so. "All the in-
dications of our campaign are auspicious," he notified Washington on
December 18, the day after the fall of Baton Rouge, "and I hope to
make good the most sanguine expectations in regard to my expedi-
tion."
There were, however, two previously unsuspected matters for
concern, one military, one civil, and both grave. The first was the pres-
ence, thirty-five miles above Baton Rouge, which in turn was a hun-
dred miles above New Orleans, of the fortifications at Port Hudson.
Neither his Washington superiors nor Banks himself, until he arrived,
had known of the existence of any such obstacle south of Vicksburg, an-
other 250 winding miles upstream; yet intelligence reports informed
him now that the Confederates had no less than 12,000 troops in the
place, strongly intrenched on the landward side and with 21 heavy
guns emplaced on the high bluff, waiting to sink or blow sky high what-
ever came their way across the chocolate-colored surface of the river.
This in itself, placing as it did a new complexion on the problem of as-
cent, was enough to give Banks pause. But the other concern, the civil
one, was even more disturbing in its way, since it showed that the com-
mand of the department was going to be a far more complex occupation
than he had supposed, early that month, when he set out from Virginia.
Less than two weeks after his arrival, for example, he received a note
from one C. A. Smith, commission agent for certain northern interests,
and Andrew Butler, whose brother Ben had set him up in business when
he took over as military ruler of New Orleans. "Dear Sir," it read. "If
you will allow our commercial program to be [carried] out as projected
previous to your arrival in this department, giving the same support and
facilities as your predecessor, I am authorized on [receiving], your as-
sent to place at your disposal $100,000."
In the course of his rise from bobbin boy to the top of the heap
in Massachusetts politics Banks no doubt had encountered other offers
of this nature, but hardly one that was made so blatantly or with such
apparent confidence in his basic corruptibility. "It was no temptation,"
he told his wife. "I thank God every night that I have no desire for dis-
honest gains." All the same, he felt obliged to report to Washington
"that as much, or more, attention has been given to civil than to military
matters," including the training of his army, and that, in consequence,
the troops were "not in condition for immediate service." Though he
declared on Christmas Eve, "We hope to move up the river at the close
of the week," he was still in New Orleans after New Year's, complain-
ing that he was cramped by a shortage of siege artillery. "The enemy's
[56] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
works at Port Hudson have been in progress many months and are
formidable," he explained. "Our light field guns would make no
impression on them." In fact, having learned by now of the reverses
lately suffered by the column supposed to be working its way south-
ward out of Memphis while he moved northward from New Orleans,
he was beginning to "feel some anxiety as to the defenses of this city. . . .
The enemy is concentrating all available forces on the river, and in the
event of disasters North will not fail to turn their attention to this
quarter."
So it was that, now in January — while Taylor kept busy raising
and training an army in the bayous, lulled to sleep each night in his
ambulance by the clopping of hoofs as he traveled the moon-drenched
roads of the Teche and dreamed of retaking the South's first city —
Banks stayed where he was, bedeviled by itchy-handed speculators, made
apprehensive by rebel successes upriver, and fretted by shortages while
he continued his preparations for the upstream movement which he
had assured his superiors in December would be launched without de-
lay.
Another part of his assignment, albeit one that was no more than
incidental, he had also placed in the way of execution, though so far on
a scale that was small indeed. Its conception was provoked by the
shortage of cotton for the textile mills of New England, 3,252,000 of
whose 4,745,750 spindles had fallen idle by the middle of the year, with
the result that production was down to less than one fourth of normal
before its close. New Orleans having failed to yield more than a
comparative handful of bales, the hungry manufacturers had cast their
eyes on Texas. What they had in mind was conquest and colonization;
they saw their chance to make of it what one observer called "another
and a fairer Kansas," where Yankee know-how and industry, replacing
the slovenly farming methods now employed, would produce more
cotton in a single year than had previously been grown in all the history
of the vast Lone Star expanse. That way, the idle spindles would be fed,
the mill hands would return to work, and the owners would get rich.
First, however, the army would have to clear the path for immigration,
and in this connection Banks had in his entourage a Texas Unionist,
Andrew Jackson Hamilton, upon whom the War Department, at the
behest of the New England manufacturers, had conferred the rank of
brigadier general, together with appointment as military governor of
Texas. He would take office, preparing the way for the textile-sponsored
"colonists," when and if Banks won control of some portion of the state
for him to govern.
So far, all there was for him in this regard was Galveston harbor,
seized two months ago by the navy and now being patrolled by gun-
boats of the West Coast Blockading Squadron, part of Farragut's com-
The Longest Journey [ 57 J
mand. Texas was far down on the list of Banks's assigned objectives;
though his department had been enlarged to include that state, its oc-
cupation was scheduled to follow the opening of the Mississippi and the
conquest of the Red River Valley in northwest Louisiana; but at Hamil-
ton's urging he agreed to send a Massachusetts regiment to take and hold
the island town at once, thus giving the newly appointed governor at
least the shadow of a dry-land claim to his high title. Accordingly, an ad-
vance party of three companies left New Orleans on December 22, be-
fore they had had time for more than a hurried look at the sights of the
city, and landed at Galveston on Christmas Eve. There, under the muz-
zles of the gunboats anchored in the harbor, they set to work barricad-
ing the wharf as a precaution against attack from the landward side
while awaiting the arrival of the rest of the infantry by sea, together
with attached units of cavalry and field artillery.
They had need for greater caution than they suspected, for this
action brought them into immediate contact with the first in rank of
Holmes's three major generals, John Magruder. Known to be unpredict-
able and tricky, he was also first in reputation; "Prince John" he had
been called in the old army, partly because of his aristocratic manner and
his fondness for staging amateur theatricals, partly too because of his
flared mustache, luxuriant sideburns, gaudy clothes, and imperial six-
feet-two of height. As flamboyant in the Transmississippi as he had been
in his native Virginia — where, previous to becoming somewhat un-
strung in the jangle of the Seven Days, he had put on such a show of
strength with a handful of men that McClellan had been awed into im-
mobility before Yorktown — his ache for distinction and love of flour-
ish were no less pronounced in the Lone Star state. The difference
here, eight months later, was that Magruder was thinking offensively.
For some time now, in fact ever since his assignment to command the
District of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico on October 10, five days
after the Union flotilla steamed in and put Galveston under its guns,
he had had it in mind not only to liberate the island town, less than fifty
miles southeast of his Houston headquarters, but also to sink or capture
the warships riding insolently at anchor in the harbor. So far as Prince
John was concerned, the addition of those three companies of Massa-
chusetts infantry, now barricading the wharf against attack, only fat-
tened the prize within his grasp and added to the glory about to be won.
Nor was his plan for making a naval assault deterred by his lack
of anything resembling a navy. If he had none then he would build one,
or at any rate improvise one, and he did so in short order. Workmen off
the Houston docks piled bales of cotton around the paddle boxes and
decks of the Bayou City, a two-story side-wheel Mississippi steamboat,
and the stern-wheeler Neptune, a smaller vessel. The former was
armed with a rifled 32-pounder, located forward of her stacks, and the
latter's bow was faced with railroad iron to stiffen her punch as a ram.
[58] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
Their crews were army volunteers, including some 300 riflemen sta-
tioned about the decks as sharpshooters. These two "cotton-clads"
would stage the naval assault, descending Buffalo Bayou to come boom-
ing down on the five Union gunboats, Westfield, Harriet Lane, Oivasco,
C lift 072, and Sachem, which had a combined displacement of over 3000
tons and mounted a total of 28 guns, mostly heavy. For the land attack
there were in all about 500 men; Texans under Colonel Tom Green,
who had led them at Valverde, they were survivors of Brigadier General
Henry Sibley's nightmare expedition up the Rio Grande, back in the
spring. Magruder divided them into three assault columns, taking the
center one himself. By New Year's Eve his preparations were complete.
He gave the signal and the attack got under way, bringing in the new
year with a bang.
Crossing from the mainland by the unguarded bridge, he struck
the barricade shortly after midnight — only to find that his scaling lad-
ders were too short. All he could do was work his men up close and
keep exchanging shots with the defenders, who had turned out at the
first alarm and were laying down a heavy fire. Everything depended
now on the untried two-boat navy. The first the Federals knew of
its existence was when lookouts on the Westfield, Commander
W. B. Renshaw's flagship, spotted two ungainly-looking steamboats,
apparently overloaded with cotton bales, driving hard toward the an-
chored flotilla. Attempting to take evasive action, the Westfield went
aground on Pelican Island Bar, removed from the fight as effectively as
if she had been sunk. Aboard the Bayou City, bearing down on the
Harriet Lane, the gun captain of the 32-pounder shouted: "Well, here
goes for a New Year's present!" and pulled the lanyard. The first shot
missed, as did the second, and on the third the gun exploded at the breech,
killing him and four of its crew; whereupon the Neptune came up,
churning the water in her wake, and struck the Lane such a tremendous
thump that she broke her own nose and had to run up on the flats to keep
from sinking. Afloat as ashore, the battle seemed lost by mishap or mis-
calculation.
By now, however, the Bayou City had pulled up alongside the
Lane, her upper-deck riflemen firing down on the rattled bluejackets
while a boarding party swarmed over the bulwarks and began slashing
at the survivors in the style of John Paul Jones. In the course of this
melee the Union skipper was killed and his lieutenant ran up the white
flag of surrender; observing which, the other three nearby captains did
the same. Across the way, still hard aground, Renshaw saw that the
Westfield was next on the rebel target list. Determined not to have her
fall into enemy hands, he ordered the crew to abandon ship while he
lowered into an open magazine a barrel of turpentine equipped with a
slow fuze which he set and started before he turned to go. That was his
last act on earth or water, for the fuze was defective or wrongly set.
The Longest Journey [ 59 ]
Before he made it out of range, a flame-shot column of black smoke
roared skyward and the West field blew apart, her wreckage enveloped
in fire and steam.
Watching this abrupt disintegration of the naval support for the
defenders of the wharf, the Texans in front of the barricade took heart
and the Federals behind it were dejected; so much so, indeed, that the
three Massachusetts companies, warned by a step-up in the firing that an
assault was about to be launched, surrendered in a body. But the com-
manders of the gunboats Clifton, Oivasco, and Sachem, claiming that this
forcing of the issue ashore was in violation of the naval "truce" — for
so they had considered it, they later affirmed by way of rebuttal to the
outrage expressed by the rebels — hauled down their white flags and
made a sudden run for open water. The Confederates, unable to pursue
out into the Gulf, could do nothing but howl in protest at foul play.
They had lost 143 killed and wounded. Including captives the Federals
had lost about 600 soldiers and sailors: plus, of course, two gunboats and
the town. At a single stroke, boldly conceived and boldly delivered,
Magruder had cleared Texas of armed bluecoats. Nor did he intend to
grant them another foothold. Moving his headquarters triumphantly to
Galveston, he notified his government next day: "We are preparing to
give them a warm reception should they return."
The navy might (and in fact did, the following week, withdraw-
ing the 2000-ton screw steamer Brooklyn and six gunboats from the
blockade squadron off Mobile and bringing them to Galveston, where
they were careful however to maintain station well outside the harbor
and thus beyond reach of another eruption of Magruder's cotton-clads)
but Banks had no intention of returning, not even with a token force.
He counted himself lucky that the whole Bay State regiment, together
with its artillery and cavalry supports, had not landed in time to be
gobbled up, and he brought the still-loaded transports back to New
Orleans, turning a deaf ear to Would-Be-Governor Hamilton's dis-
gruntled protestations. That gentleman and his party — a sizable
group, characterized by one critic as "friends, patrons, and creditors,"
who had meant to be front runners in the intended Lone Star coloniza-
tion — returned instead to Washington, complaining bitterly that they
had been "deliberately and purposely humbugged."
Though Holmes of course was quick to congratulate Magruder,
whose amphibious coup made the one bright spot in the entire Trans-
mississippi as the new year came in, Hamilton's dejection and disgust
were not matched by any corresponding elation on the part of the over-
all commander of the Confederate Far West. Though he had managed,
on the face of it, to achieve a sort of balance within the limits of his de-
partment — defeat in northwestern Arkansas, stalemate in West Louisi-
ana, victory in coastal Texas — he knew that it was precarious in nature,
tenuous at best and, in consideration of the odds, most likely temporary.
[6o] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
Nor was the maintenance of that shaky balance only dependent on what
occurred within the borders of the monster region. Cut off, Holmes and
all those under him would be left as it were to wither on the vine; so that
what happened beyond or along those borders was equally important,
and this was true in particular as to what happened along the eastern
border, the Mississippi itself, down which he had reported the "heavy
force" of Union ironclads and transports steaming the week before past
Helena. It was headed, according to his conjecture, for Vicksburg, the
linchpin whose loss might well result in the collapse of the whole Con-
federate wagon.
X 4 X
Haste made waste and Grant knew it, but in this case the haste was un-
avoidable — unavoidable, that is, unless he was willing to take the risk
of having another general win the prize he was after — because he was
fighting two wars simultaneously: one against the Confederacy, or
at any rate so much of its army as stood between him and the river town
that was his goal, and the other against a man who, like himself, wore
blue. That was where the need for haste came in, for the rival general's
name was John McClernand. A former Springfield lawyer and Illinois
congressman, McClernand was known to have political aspirations de-
signed to carry him not one inch below the top position occupied at
present by his friend, another former Springfield lawyer and Illinois
congressman, Abraham Lincoln. Moreover, having decided that the
road to the White House led through Vicksburg, he had taken pains to
see that he traveled it well equipped, and this he had done by engaging
the preliminary support, the active military backing, not only of his
friend the President, but also of the Secretary of War, the crusty and
often difficult Edwin M. Stanton. With the odds thus lengthened
against him, Grant — when he belatedly found out what his rival had
been up to — could see that this private war against McClernand might
well turn out to be as tough, in several ways, as the public one he had
been fighting for eighteen months against the rebels.
In the first place, he had not even known that he had this private
war on his hands until it was so well under way that his rival had already
won the opening skirmish. McClernand had gone to Washington on
leave in late September, complaining privately that he was "tired of fur-
nishing brains" for Grant's army. Arriving in the capital he appealed to
Lincoln to "let one volunteer officer try his abilities." His plan was to re-
turn to his old political stamping ground and there, by reaching also into
Indiana and Iowa, raise an army with which he would descend the
Mississippi, capture Vicksburg, "and open navigation to New Orleans."
Lincoln liked the sound of that and took him to see Stanton, who liked
The Longest Journey [ 61 ]
it too. McClernand left Washington in late October, armed with a con-
fidential order signed by Stanton and indorsed by Lincoln, giving offi-
cial sanction to his plan. By early November Grant was hearing rumors
from upriver in Illinois: rumors which were presently reinforced by a
dispatch from General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, whom the three
former lawyers had not taken into their confidence. Memphis, which
was in Grant's department, was to "be made the depot of a joint mili-
tary and naval expedition on Vicksburg." Alarmed at hearing the ru-
mors confirmed, Grant wired back: "Am I to understand that I lie still
here while an expedition is fitted out from Memphis, or do you want me
to push south as far as possible?" Halleck was something of a lawyer,
too, though he now found himself at cross-purposes with the men who
had not let him in on the secret. "You have command of all troops
sent to your department," he replied, " and have permission to fight the
enemy where you please."
Grant considered himself unleashed. Organizing his mobile force
of about 40,000 effectives into right and left wings, respectively under
Major General W. T. Sherman and Brigadier General C. S. Hamilton,
with the center under Major General J. B. McPherson, he began to
move at once, southward along the Mississippi Central Railroad from
Grand Junction. Ordinarily he would have preferred to wait for re-
inforcements, but not now. "I feared that delay might bring McClern-
and," he later explained. Vicksburg was 250 miles away, and as he saw it
the town belonged to the man who got there first. By mid-November
he was in Holly Springs, where he set up a depot of supplies and muni-
tions, then continued on across the Tallahatchie, leapfrogging his head-
quarters to Oxford while the lead division was fording the Yocknapa-
talfa, eight miles north of Water Valley, which was occupied during the
first week of December. The movement had been rapid and well co-
ordinated; so far, it had encountered only token resistance from the
rebels, who were fading back before the advance of the bluecoats. Pres-
ently Grant discovered why. Pemberton — whose strength he consid-
erably overestimated as equal to his own — was avoiding serious con-
tact while seeking a tactical advantage, and at last he found it. He called
a halt near Grenada, another twenty-five miles beyond Water Valley,
and put his gray-clad troops to work improving with intrenchments a
position of great natural strength along the Yalobusha. Approaching
CofF eeville on December 5, midway between Water Valley and Grenada,
the Federal cavalry was struck a blow that signified the end of easy
progress. Still 150-odd miles from Vicksburg, Grant could see that the
going was apt to be a good deal rougher and slower from here on.
Something else he could see as well, something that disturbed him
even more. While he was being delayed in the piny highlands of north-
central Mississippi, facing the rebels intrenched along the high-banked
Yalobusha, McClernand might come down to Memphis, where advance
[62] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
contingents of his expedition were awaiting him already, and ride the
broad smooth highway of the Mississippi River down to Vicksburg un-
opposed: in which case Grant would not only have lost his private war,
he would even have helped his opponent win it by holding Pemberton
and the greater part of the Vicksburg garrison in position, 150 miles
away, while McClernand captured the weakly defended town with little
more exertion than had been required in the course of the long boat ride
south from Cairo. That was what rankled worst, the thought that he
would have helped to pluck the laurels that would grace his rival's
brow. But as he thought distastefully of this, it began to occur to him
that he saw here the possibility of a campaign of his own along these
lines. "You have command of all troops sent to your department," Hal-
leck had told him, and presumably this included the recruits awaiting
McClernand's arrival at Memphis. So Grant, still at his Oxford head-
quarters on December 8, sent a note to Sherman, whose command was
at College Hill, ten miles away: "I wish you would come over this
evening and stay tonight, or come in the morning. I would like to talk
with you."
Sherman did not wait for morning. Impatient as always, he rode
straight over, a tall red-haired man with a fidgety manner, concave tem-
ples, glittering hazel eyes, and a scraggly, close-cropped beard. "I never
saw him but I thought of Lazarus," one observer was to write. A chain
smoker who, according to another witness, got through each cigar "as if
it was a duty to be finished in the shortest possible time," he was forty-
two, two years older than the comparatively stolid Grant and once his
military senior, too, until Donelson brought the younger brigadier fame
and a promotion, both of which had been delayed for Sherman until
Shiloh, where he fought under — some said, saved — his former junior.
He felt no resentment at that. In fact, he saw Grant as "the coming
man in this war." But he had never had better reason for this belief than
now at Oxford, when he was closeted with him and heard his plan for
the sudden capture of Vicksburg with the help of a kidnaped army.
As usual in military matters, geography played a primary part in
determining what was to be done, and how. Various geographic factors
made Vicksburg an extremely difficult nut to crack. First there was the
bluff itself, the 200-foot red-clay escarpment dominating the hairpin
bend of the river at its base, unscalable for infantry and affording the
guns emplaced on its crest a deadly plunging fire — as Farragut, for
one, could testify — against whatever naval forces moved against or
past it. As for land forces, since they could not scale the bluff itself, even
if they had been able to approach it from the front, their only alterna-
tive was to come upon it frcm the rear; that is, either to march overland
down the Mississippi Central to Grenada, as Grant was now attempting
to do, and thence along the high ground lying between the Yazoo and
the Big Black Rivers, or else debark from their transports somewhere
The Longest Journey
[63
SHERMAN
RANT
nfvuu^j 40
short of the town and make a wide swing east, in order to approach it
from that direction. However, the latter was nearly impossible, too, be-
cause of another geographic factor, the so-called Yazoo-Mississippi
alluvial delta. This incredibly fertile, magnolia-leaf-shaped region, 200
miles in length and 50 miles in average width, bounded east and west by
the two rivers that gave it
its compound name, and north
and south by the hills that rose
below and above Memphis and
Vicksburg, was nearly roadless
throughout its flat and swampy
expanse, was subject to floods in
all but the driest seasons, and —
except for the presence of a scat-
tering of pioneers who risked its
malarial and intestinal disorders
for the sake of the richness of its
forty-foot topsoil, which in time,
after the felling of its big trees
and the draining of its bayous,
would make it the best cotton
farmland in the world — was the
exclusive domain of moccasins,
bears, alligators, and panthers. It was, in short, impenetrable to all but
the smallest of military parties, engaged in the briefest of forays. An
army attempting to march across or through it would come out at the
other end considerably reduced in numbers and fit for nothing more
strenuous than a six-month rest, with quinine as the principal item on
its diet. Anyhow, Grant did not intend to try it that way. He had his eye
fixed on the mouth of the Yazoo, twelve miles above Vicksburg, and it
seemed to him that an amphibious force could ascend that river for a
landing on the southeast bank, which would afford the troops a straight
shot at the town on the bluff. True, there were hills here, too — the
Walnut Hills, they were called, the beginning of the long ridge known
as the Chickasaw Bluffs, which lay along the left bank of the Yazoo,
overlooking the flat morass of the delta — but they were by no means
as forbidding as the heights overlooking the Mississippi, a dozen miles
below. It was Grant's belief that determined men, supported by the guns
of the fleet, could swarm over these comparatively low-lying hills,
brushing aside whatever portion of the weakened garrison tried to stop
them, and be inside the town before nightfall of the day they came
ashore.
That was why he had sent for Sherman, who seemed to him
the right man for the job. Sherman happily agreed to undertake it, and
Grant gave him his written orders that same evening. He was to return
[64] THE CIVIL WAR3T1862
at once to Memphis with one of his three divisions, which he would
combine with McClernand's volunteers, already waiting there. This
would give him 21,000 troops, and to these would be added another
12,000 to be picked up at Helena on the way downriver, bringing his
total strength to four divisions of 33,000 men, supported by Porter's
fleet. Grant explained that he himself would continue to bristle aggres-
sively along the line of the Yalobusha "so as to keep up the impression
of a continuous move," and if Pemberton fell back prematurely he
would "follow him even to the gates of Vicksburg," in which event he
and Sherman would meet on the Yazoo and combine for the final dash
into the town. Delighted with the prospect, Sherman was off next day
for Memphis, altogether mindful of the need for haste if he was to fore-
stall both McClernand and Pemberton. "Time now is the great ob-
ject," he wired Porter. "We must not give time for new combinations.' ,
He did not make it precisely clear whether these feared "com-
binations" were being designed in Richmond or in Washington —
whether, that is, they threatened the successful prosecution of Grant's
public or his private war. By mid-December, however, Grant's worries
in regard to the latter were mostly over. Sherman was in Memphis,
poised for the jump-off, and McClernand's men had become organic
parts of the army the redhead was about to take downriver. There was
still one danger. McClernand outranked him; which meant that if he
arrived before Sherman left, he would assume command by virtue of
seniority. But Grant considered this unlikely. Sherman was thoroughly
aware of the risk and would be sure to avoid the consequences. Besides,
with Halleck's telegram in his files as license for the kidnap operation,
Grant felt secure from possible thunder from on high. "I doubted Mc-
Clernand's fitness," he later wrote, "and I had good reason to believe that
in forestalling him I was by no means giving offense to those whose
authority to command was above both him and me."
The arrival of a telegram from Washington on the 1 8th, instruct-
ing him to divide his command (now and henceforward to be called
the Army of the Tennessee) into four corps, with .McClernand in
charge of one of those assigned to operations down the Mississippi —
which meant of course that, once he joined it, he would be in charge of
the whole column by virtue of his rank, unless Grant himself came over
and took command along the river route — did not disturb the plans
Grant had described in a letter home, three days ago, as "all complete
for weeks to come," adding: "I hope to have them all work out just as
planned." Sherman was ready to leave, he knew, and in fact would be
gone tomorrow, before McClernand could possibly arrive from Illinois.
Blandly he wired his new subordinate word of the Washington order,
which dispelled McClernand's illusion that his command was to be an in-
dependent one. Instructing him to come on down to Memphis, Grant
even managed to keep a straight face while remarking: "I hope you will
The Longest Journey [ 65 ]
find all the preliminary preparations completed on your arrival and the
expedition ready to move."
• • *
McClernand found no such thing, of course. All he found when
at last he reached Memphis on December 29 were the empty docks his
men had departed from, ten days ago under Sherman, and Grant's tele-
gram, delayed eleven days in transmission. Nor did Grant's own plans,
"all complete for weeks to come," work out as he had intended and pre-
dicted. In both cases — entirely in the former and largely in the latter
— the cause could be summed up in three two-syllable nouns: Nathan
Bedford Forrest.
"He was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood
in much dread," a friend of the Union general's once remarked. Then he
told why. "Who's commanding?" Grant would ask on hearing that gray
raiders were on the prowl. If it was some other rebel chieftain he would
shrug off the threat with a light remark; "but if Forrest was in com-
mand he at once became apprehensive, because the latter was amenable
to no known rules of procedure, was a law unto himself for all military
acts, and was constantly doing the unexpected at all times and places."
Grant's apprehensions were well founded as he looked back over
his shoulder in the direction of his main supply base at Columbus, Ken-
tucky; or, more specifically, since the far-off river town was adequately
garrisoned against raiders, as he traced on the map the nearly two hun-
dred highly vulnerable, not to say frangible, miles of railroad which
were his sole all-weather connection with the munitions and food his
army in North Mississippi required if it was to continue to shoot and
eat. Without that base and those railroads, once he had used up the re-
serve supplies already brought forward and stored at Holly Springs, his
choice would lie between retreat on the one hand and starvation
or surrender on the other. Just now, moreover, the reason his apprehen-
sions were so well founded was that Forrest was looking — and not
only looking, but moving — in that direction, too: as Grant learned
from a dispatch received December 15 from Jackson, Tennessee, a
vital junction about midway of his vulnerable supply line. "Forrest is
crossing [the] Tennessee at Clifton," the local commander wired. Four
days later, Jackson itself was under attack by a mounted force which the
Federal defenders estimated at 10,000 men, with Forrest himself defi-
nitely in charge.
Pemberton had begun it by appealing to Bragg in late November
for a diversion in West Tennessee, which he thought might ease the
pressure on his front, and Bragg had responded by sending Forrest in-
structions to "throw his command rapidly over the Tennessee River and
precipitate it upon the enemy's lines, break up railroads, burn bridges,
[66] THE CIVIL WAR »■ 1862
destroy depots, capture hospitals and guards, and harass him generally."
Receiving these orders December 10 at Columbia, forty miles south of
Nashville, Forrest was off next day with four regiments of cavalry and a
four-gun battery, 2 100 men in all, mostly recruits newly brigaded under
his command and mainly armed with shotguns and flintlock muskets.
Four days later and sixty miles away, he began to cross the Tennessee at
Clifton on two flatboats which he had built for the emergency and
which he afterwards sank in a nearby creek in case he needed them com-
ing back. Deep in enemy country, with the bluecoats warned of his cross-
ing while it was still in progress, he encountered on the 1 8th, near Lex-
ington, two regiments of infantry, a battalion of cavalry, and a section
of artillery, all under Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, who had been sent
out to intercept him. The meeting engagement was brief and decisive.
Falling back on the town, Ingersoll took up what he thought was a good
defensive position and was firing rapidly with his two guns at the rebels
to his front, when suddenly he "found that the enemy were pouring in
on all directions." The fight ended quite as abruptly as it had begun.
"If he really believed that there is no hell," one grayback later said of
the postwar orator-agnostic, "we convinced him that there was some-
thing mightily like it." Captured along with his two guns and 150 of his
men, while the rest made off* "on the full run" for Jackson, twenty-five
miles to the west, Ingersoll greeted his captors with aplomb: "Is this
the army of your Southern Confederacy for which I have so diligently
sought? Then I am your guest until the wheels of the great Cartel are put
in motion."
Following hard on the heels of the fugitives, who he knew would
stumble into Jackson with exaggerated stories of his strength, Forrest
advanced to within four miles of the place and began to dispose his
"army" as if for assault, maneuvering boldly along the ridge-lines and
beating kettledrums at widely scattered points to keep up the illusion, or,
as he called it, "the skeer." It worked quite well. Convinced that he was
heavily outnumbered, though in fact he had about four times as many
troops inside the town as the Confederates had outside it, Brigadier Gen-
eral Jeremiah Sullivan prepared to make a desperate house-to-house de-
fense. All next day the rebel host continued to gather, waxing bolder
hour by hour. When dawn of the 20th showed the graybacks gone,
Sullivan took heart and set out after them, pushing eastward — into
emptiness, as it turned out, for Forrest had swung north. Today in fact,
having thrown the Federal main body off his trail, he began in earnest to
carry out his primary assignment, the destruction of the sixty miles of
the Mobile & Ohio connecting Jackson and Union City, up near the
Kentucky line. The common complaint of army commanders, that cav-
alry could seldom be persuaded to get down off their horses for the
hard work that was necessary if the damage to enemy installations was
to be more than temporary, was never leveled against Forrest's men.
The Longest Journey [ 67 ]
Besides forcing the surrender of the several blue garrisons in towns
along the line, they tore up track, burned crossties and trestles, and
wrecked culverts so effectively that this stretch of the M&O was out of
commission for the balance of the war. In Union City on Christmas Eve,
resting his troopers after their four-day rampage with axes and sledges,
Forrest reported by courier to Bragg that, at a cost so far of 2 2 men, he
had killed or captured more than 1300 of the enemy, "including 4 colo-
nels, 4 majors, 10 captains, and 23 lieutenants." That he considered this
no more than a respectable beginning was shown by his closing re-
mark: "My men have all behaved well in action, and as soon as rested
a little you will hear from me in another quarter."
His problem now, after paroling his captives and sending them
north to Columbus to spread bizarre reports of his strength — reports
that were based on bogus dispatches, which he had been careful to let
them overhear while their papers were being made out at his headquar-
ters — was, first, what further damage to inflict and, second, how to
get back over the river intact before the various Federal columns, still
chasing phantoms all over West Tennessee, converged on him with over-
whelming numbers. The first was solved on Christmas Day, when he
marched southeast out of Union City and spent the next two days ad-
ministering to the Nashville & Northwestern the treatment already given
the M&O. Reaching McKenzie on the 28th in an icy, pelting rain, he
headed south across the swampy bottoms of the swollen Obion River,
and now began his solution of the second part of his problem. Instead of
trying to make a run for the Tennessee, with the chance of being caught
half-over and hamstrung, he decided to brazen out the game by thrust-
ing in among the Federals attempting a convergence, and by vigorous
blows, struck right or left at whatever came within his reach, stun them
into inaction or retreat, while he continued his movement toward the
security of Middle Tennessee.
The fact was, he had little to fear from the direction of Colum-
bus. Brigadier General Thomas A. Davies, commander of the 5000 blue-
coats gathered there, had been so alarmed by demonstrations within ten
miles of the town on Christmas Eve, as well as by the parolees coming in
next day with reports of 40,000 infantry on the march from Bragg,
that he had spiked the guns at New Madrid and Island Ten, throwing
the powder into the Mississippi to keep it out of rebel hands, and now
was concentrating everything in order to protect the $13,000,000 worth
of supplies and equipment being loaded onto steamboats at the Columbus
wharf for a getaway in case Forrest broke his lines. Conditions were
scarcely better, from the Union point of view, 250 miles downriver at
Memphis, where the citizens had become so elated over rumors that their
former alderman was coming home, along with thousands of his troop-
ers, that Major General S. A. Hurlbut, perturbed by their reaction and
the fact that his garrison was down to a handful since the departure of
[68] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
Sherman, telegraphed Washington: "I hold city by terror of heavy
guns bearing upon it and the belief that an attack would cause its destruc-
tion." Grant, however, was of a different breed. He was thinking not of
his safety, but of the possible destruction of Forrest and his men. "I
have directed such a concentration of troops that I think not many of
them will get back to the east bank of the Tennessee," he informed a sub-
ordinate. Nor was this opinion ill-founded. One superior blue force was
coming south from Fort Henry, another north from Corinth, and both
were now much closer to the Clifton crossing than Forrest was. So, for
that matter, were Jere Sullivan and his three brigades, two of which were
back by now from their goose chase east of Jackson and headed north.
Undiscouraged by his lack of luck so far, he believed he knew just
where the raiders were, and he intended to bag them. "I have Forrest in
a tight place," he wired Grant on December 29. "My troops are mov-
ing on him from three directions, and I hope with success."
Forrest was indeed in a tight place, and that place was about to
get tighter. Emerging from the flooded Obion bottoms, which he had
crossed by an abandoned causeway, he paused on December 30 to let
Sullivan's unsuspecting lead brigade go by him, then resumed his march
past Huntingdon and toward Clarksburg, nearing which place on the
morning of the last day of the year he encountered the other brigade,
forewarned and drawn up to meet him at Parker's Crossroads. By way of
precaution he had sent four companies to guard the road from Hunt-
ingdon and warn him in case the lead brigade turned back, and now, se-
cure in the belief that his rear was well protected against surprise, he
settled down to a casualty-saving artillery duel with the blue force to
his front. It lasted from about 9 o'clock until an hour past noon, by
which time he had captured three of the enemy guns and 1 8 wagonloads
of ammunition and had driven the skirmishers back on their supports.
He had in fact ceased firing, in response to several white flags displayed
along the Union line, and was sending in his usual demand for "uncondi-
tional surrender to prevent the further effusion of blood," when an at-
tack exploded directly in his rear. For the first last only time in his ca-
reer, Forrest was completely surprised in battle. His reaction was
immediate. Quickly resuming the fight to his front, he simultaneously
charged rearward, stalling the surprise attackers with blows to the head
and flanks, and withdrew sideways before his opponents recovered
from the shock. It was smartly done — later giving rise to the legend
that his response to a staff officer's flustered question, "What shall we do?
What shall we do?" was: "Charge both ways!" — but not without
sacrifice. The captured guns were abandoned, along with three of his
own, for lack of horses to draw them, as well as the 18 wagonloads of
ammunition. Three hundred men who had been fighting afoot were
taken, too, while trying to catch their mounts, which had bolted at the
sudden burst of gunfire from the rear. Sullivan, coming up from be-
The Longest Journey [ 69 ]
hind Jackson with his third brigade next day, was elated. "Forrest's army
completely broken up," he wired Grant. "They are scattered over the
country without ammunition. We need a good cavalry regiment to go
through the country and pick them up."
So he said. But while he and his three brigades were waiting for
that "good regiment," Forrest and his troopers were riding hard for the
Tennessee and eluding the columns approaching cautiously from
Corinth and Fort Henry. All in high spirits on New Year's Day —
except possibly the captain who by now had been verbally blistered for
taking yesterday's rear-guard companies up the wrong road and thus per-
mitting the Federals to march past him unobserved — they reached
Clifton about midday, raised the sunken flatboats, and were across the
icy river before dawn. The basis for their high spirits was a sense of
accomplishment. They had gone out as green recruits, miserably armed,
and had returned within less than three weeks as veterans, equipped with
the best accouterments and weapons the U.S. government could provide.
In the course of a brief midwinter campaign, which opened and closed
with a pontoonless crossing of one of the nation's great rivers, and in the
course of which they more than made up in recruits for what they lost in
battle or on the march, they had killed or paroled as many men as they
had in their whole command and had kept at least ten times their number
of bluecoats frantically busy for a fortnight. Besides the estimated
$3,000,000 they had cost the Federals in wrecked installations and
equipment, they had taken or destroyed 10 guns and captured 10,000 rifles
and a million badly needed cartridges. Above all, they had accomplished
their primary assignment by cutting Grant's lifeline, from Jackson north
to the Kentucky border. They saw all this as Forrest's doing, and it
was their pride, now and for all the rest of their lives — whether those
lives were to end next week in combat or were to stretch on down the
years to the ones they spent sunning their old bones on the galleries of
crossroads stores throughout the Deep and Central South — that they
had belonged to what in time would be known as his Old Brigade.
Pemberton was highly pleased, not only with the results of this
cavalry action outside the limits of his department, but also with an-
other which had been carried out within those limits and which he
himself had designed as a sort of companion piece or counterpart to the
raid-in-progress beyond the Tennessee line. Both had a profound effect
on the situation he had been facing ever since he called a halt and began
intrenching along the Yalobusha, preparatory to coming to grips with
Grant's superior army: so profound an effect, indeed, that it presently
became obvious that if he and Grant were to come to grips, it would be
neither here nor now. Like that of the first, the success of this second
horseback exploit — which in point of fact was simultaneous rather
than sequential, beginning later and ending sooner — could also be
[7o]
THE CIVIL WAR
1862
summed up in three nouns, though in this case the summary was even
briefer, since all three were single-syllabled: Earl Van Dorn.
"Buck" Van Dorn, as he had been called at West Point and by his
fellow officers in the old army, had leaped at the chance for distinction,
not only because it was part of his nature to delight in desperate ven-
tures, but also because he was badly in need just now of personal re-
demption. After a brilliant pre-
Manassas career in Texas, he had
been called to Virginia, then re-
assigned to Arkansas, where his
attempt at a double envelopment
had been foiled disastrously at
Elkhorn Tavern. Crossing the
Mississippi after Shiloh, he had
suffered an even bloodier repulse
at Corinth in October, which
gave him so evil a reputation in
his home state that a court had
been called to hear evidence of
his bungling. Although he was
cleared by the court, the govern-
ment soon afterwards promoted
Pemberton over the head upon
which the public was still heap-
ing condemnations. The accusa-
tion that he was "the source of
all our woes," Senator Phelan wrote President Davis, was "so fastened
in the public belief that an acquittal by a court-martial of angels would
not relieve him of the charge." Van Dorn was depressed, but he was
not without hope. A court-martial of angels was one thing; a brilliant
military exploit, characterized by boldness and attended by great risk,
was quite another. So when Pemberton summoned him to army head-
quarters and gave him his assignment — an all-out raid on Grant's com-
munications and supply lines, including the great depot lately established
at Holly Springs — the diminutive Mississippian saw in it the opportu-
nity to retrieve his reputation and bask once more in the warmth of
his countrymen's affection. Always one to grasp the nettle danger, he
embraced the offered chance without delay.
He left Grenada on December 18 with 3500 cavalry, heading
east at first to skirt Grant's flank, then north as if for a return to Corinth.
Next day, however, he turned west beyond New Albany and came
thundering into Holly Springs at dawn, December 20. The Federal com-
mander there, Colonel R. C. Murphy, had been placed in a similar un-
comfortable position in September at Iuka, which he had abandoned
The Longest Journey [ 71 ]
without a fight or even destruction of the stores to keep them from fall-
ing into enemy hands. Grant had forgiven him then because of his youth
and inexperience, and now he was given another chance to prove his
mettle. He did no better. In fact, despite advance warning that a
heavy column of graybacks was moving in his direction, he did far
worse. This time, he lost not only the stores in his charge but also the
soldiers, 1500 of whom were captured and paroled on the spot by the
jubilant rebels, caracoling their horses at the sight of the mountains of
food and equipment piled here for Grant's army. "My fate is most mor-
tifying," he reported that night amid the embers which were all that re-
mained of the million-dollar depot of supplies. "I have done all in my
power — in truth, my force was inadequate."
Grant reacted "with pain and mortification" at the news of his
loss and ordered Murphy dismissed from the service, as of "the date of
his cowardly and disgraceful conduct." With Forrest loose on the rail-
road north of Jackson that same day, and his own wife spared em-
barrassment at Holly Springs only because she had left to join him in
Oxford the day before, Grant began to design combinations of forces
in North Mississippi, not unlike those already sent out after Forrest in
West Tennessee, to accomplish Van Dorn's destruction before he could
return to safety behind the Yalobusha. "I want those fellows caught, if
possible," he said.
The trouble with this was that by the time the various columns
could be put in motion Van Dorn was no longer in North Mississippi.
Instead of racing for home, and perhaps into the arms of superior forces
already gathering in his rear, he pushed on northward into Tennessee.
Before he left his native state, however, the commander of a small out-
post at Davis Mill, twenty miles north of Holly Springs and just south
of the Tennessee line, gave him — and, incidentally, Murphy — a les-
son in how well an "inadequate" force could hold its own against "over-
whelming" numbers. His name was Colonel W. H. Morgan and he had
less than 300 men for the defense of a point made critical by the presence
of a trestle by which the Mississippi Central crossed Wolf River. Hear-
ing that the raiders were coming his way, he converted an old sawmill
into a blockhouse, reinforcing its walls with cotton bales and crossties,
and a nearby Indian mound into a moated earthwork, both of which
covered the railroad approach with converging fire. About noon of
the 2 1 st, the Confederates came up and launched a quick assault,
which was repulsed. After a two-hour long-range skirmish, finding the
fire too hot for a storming party to reach and ignite the trestle, let alone
cross the river, the attackers sent forward, under a flag of truce, a note
asking whether the defenders were ready to surrender. Morgan replied
with what he later termed "a respectful but decided negative," and the
Confederates withdrew, leaving 22 dead and 30 wounded on the field,
[72] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
along with another 20 prisoners who had ventured up too close to be
able to pull back without exposing themselves to slaughter. Morgan's
loss was 3 men slightly wounded.
Except for the further damage it did to his former opinion that
one Southerner was worth ten Yankee hirelings in a scrap, Van Dorn
was not greatly disturbed by this tactical upset. In the course of his ap-
proach to the fight, and even while it was in progress, he had done the
railroad enough damage to be able to afford to let the trestle go. By-
passing Morgan's improvised blockhouse, he crossed upstream and
pushed on northward between Grand Junction and LaGrange, where
he tore up sections of the Memphis & Charleston for good measure.
Near Bolivar on the 23rd, he circled Middleburg, still ripping up track
and wrecking culverts, and headed back south on Christmas Eve, riding
through Van Buren and Saulsbury to re-enter Mississippi. South of Rip-
ley on Christmas Day, he had a brush with one of the converging
Union colums, but pressed on without delay, through Pontotoc and
thence on back to Grenada, which he reached by midafternoon of De-
cember 28. He had carried out his mission in fine style, destroying
Grant's reserve supplies of food, forage, and munitions. What was more,
at least from a particular point of view, he had refurbished his tarnished
reputation. Households which formerly had mentioned his name only
with frowns of disapproval or downright scowls of condemnation now
drank his health with shouts of joy and praised him to the skies.
Pemberton, then, was delighted at the manner in which Van
Dorn had achieved redemption; but not Grant, who paid the bill which
thus was added to all that Forrest was costing him simultaneously.
With Columbus in a panic, Memphis cowed by heavy guns, his com-
munications disrupted, and his supply line almost a continuous wreck
from Holly Springs north to the Kentucky border, he was stymied and
he knew it. Van Dorn having destroyed his supplies on hand and For-
rest having made it impossible for him to bring up more, he could
neither move forward nor stand still. There was no way he could go
but back, and this he proceeded to do, meanwhile solving the problem of
immediate subsistence by sending out "all the wagons we had, under
proper escort, to collect and bring in all supplies of forage and food
from a region of fifteen miles east and west of the road from our front
back to Grand Junction." At the news of this, the broad smiles caused
by Van Dorn's coup faded from the faces of the people around Ox-
ford. Their former mocking question, "What will you do now?" was
changed to: "What are we to do?" Grant replied that he had done his
best to feed his soldiers from their own northern resources, but now that
these had been cut off "it could not be expected that men, with arms
in their hands, would starve in the midst of plenty." In short, as he said
later, "I advised them to emigrate east, or west, fifteen miles and assist
in eating up what we left."
The Longest Journey [ 73 ]
To his amazement — for he had thought the pickings would be
slim and had lately advised his government that an army could not "sub-
sist itself on the country except in forage"; "Disaster would result in
the end," he had predicted — the wagons returned heavy-laden with
hams, corn on the cob, field peas and beans, sweet and Irish potatoes, and
fowls of every description, accompanied by herds of beef on the hoof.
"It showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months
instead of two weeks without going beyond the limits designated," he
subsequently wrote, adding: "This taught me a lesson."
The knowledge thus gained might prove to be of great use in
the future, but for the present one thing still bothered him beyond all
others. This was the thought that, putting it baldly, he was leaving his
friend Sherman in the lurch. He had promised to hold Pemberton in
position, 150 miles from Vicksburg, while Sherman was storming its
thinly held defenses; yet Pemberton was already hurrying troops in that
direction, as Grant knew, and might well arrive in time to smother
the attackers in the Yazoo bottoms. However, there was little Grant
could do about it now, except depend on Sherman to work out his own
salvation. Out of touch as he was, because of his ruptured communica-
tions, Grant did not even know whether Sherman had left Memphis
yet — or, if so, whether he was still in command of the river expedition;
McClernand, in event of delay, might have arrived in time to take over.
All Grant could do was send a courier to Memphis with a message ad-
dressed to "Commanding Officer Expedition down Mississippi," advising
him, whoever he was, "that farther advance by this route is perfectly
impracticable" and that he and his men were falling back, while Pember-
ton did likewise. Whether this would arrive in time to forestall disaster,
he did not know.
Sherman was already downriver, and so far his only thought of
disaster had been the intention to inflict it. "You may calculate on our
being at Vicksburg by Christmas," he wrote Grant's adjutant on De-
cember 19, the day he left Memphis. "River has risen some feet, and all
is now good navigation. Gunboats are at mouth of Yazoo now, and
there will be no difficulty in effecting a landing up Yazoo within twelve
miles of Vicksburg." Two days later at Helena, where he picked up his
fourth division, he received from upriver his first intimation that Grant
might be having trouble in the form of rebel cavalry, which was re-
ported to have captured Holly Springs. If this was so, then Sherman's
first letter most likely had not got through to Oxford; nor would a sec-
ond. Nevertheless, he refused to be disconcerted, and wrote again. "I
hardly know what faith to put in such a report," he said, "but suppose
whatever may be the case you will attend to it."
All was indeed "good navigation" for the fifty-odd army trans-
[74] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
ports and the 32,500 soldiers close-packed on their decks, steaming
rapidly toward their destiny below, as well as for the naval escort of
three ironclads, two wooden gunboats, and two rams. But for the rest
of Porter's fleet — three ironclads and two "tinclads," so called because
their armor was no more than musket-proof — the going had been
less easy. Sent downriver two weeks before, they had succeeded in
clearing the Yazoo from its mouth upstream to Haines Bluff, where a
stout Confederate battery defined the limit of penetration, 23 winding
miles from the point of entrance. This had not been accomplished with-
out cost, however, for the defenses were in charge of Isaac Brown, and
Brown was known to be hungry for vengeance because of the recent loss
above Baton Rouge of the steam ram Arkansas, which he had built up
this same river the summer before and with which he had charged and
sundered the two flotillas then besieging Vicksburg. He had no warship
now, but he had notions about torpedoes, five-gallon whiskey demi-
johns packed with powder, fuzed with artillery friction tubes, and each
suspended a few feet below a float on the muddy surface. On Decem-
ber 12 the five-boat Union reconnaissance squadron appeared up the
Yazoo, shelling the banks and fishing up Brown's torpedoes as it ad-
vanced. Approaching Haines Bluff, the ironclad Cairo made contact
with one of the glass demijohns at five minutes before noon, and at 12.03
she was out of sight, all but the tips of her stacks, in thirty feet of water.
Celerity and good discipline made it possible for the crew to
abandon ship within the allowed eight minutes. No lives were lost, but
the Cairo's skipper, Lieutenant Commander T. O. Selfridge, Jr., a young
man with a lofty forehead and luxuriant sideburns, was greatly disturbed
by the loss of his boat and the possible end of his career as well, depend-
ing on the admiral's reaction to the news. Steaming back down the
Yazoo aboard one of the tinclads, he found Porter himself at the mouth
of the river, just arrived from Memphis, and stiffly requested a court of
inquiry. "Court!" the admiral snorted. "I have no time to order courts.
I can't blame an officer who puts his ship close to the enemy. Is there
any other vessel you would like to have?" Without waiting for an an-
swer he turned abruptly to the flag captain standing beside him on the
bridge. "Breese, make out Selfridge's orders to the Conestoga."
Porter was like that, when he chose to be. Just short of fifty and
rather hard-faced, with a hearty manner and a full dark beard, he had
been given his present assignment, together with the rank of acting
rear admiral, over the heads of eighty seniors. For the present, though,
despite this cause for self-congratulation, the heartiness and bluster were
cover for worry. Most of his old sailors had broken down, with the
result that his heavy boats were half-manned, while ten light-draft ves-
sels were laid up for lack of crews, and he was complaining to Washing-
ton that a draft of new men, lately arrived from New York, were "all
boys and very ordinary landsmen." Characteristically, however, in a
The Longest Journey [ 75 ]
letter written this week to Sherman, after protesting of these and other
matters, including a shortage of provisions, fuel, medicines, and clothing
— not to mention the loss of the Cairo — he closed by observing: "I
expected that the government would send men from the East, but not a
man will they send or notice my complaints, so we will have to go on
with what we have."
Reaching Milliken's Bend, on the west bank of the Mississippi ten
miles above the mouth of the Yazoo, Sherman landed a brigade on
Christmas Day and sent it out to wreck a section of the railroad con-
necting Vicksburg and Monroe, Louisiana. Next morning, while the
brigade was returning, its mission accomplished, the rest of the armada
proceeded downstream, entered the Yazoo, and steamed up its intricate
channel. A light gunboat and an ironclad led the way, followed by
twenty transports, each with two companies of riflemen charged with
returning the fire of snipers. Then came another ironclad and twenty
more transports, similarly protected. So it went, to the tail of the 64-boat
column, until a landing was made at Johnson's Farm, on the Vicksburg
shore of the Yazoo ten miles above its mouth. Alertness had paid off, or
else it had been unnecessary. "Some few guerilla parties infested the
banks," Sherman explained, "but did not dare to molest so strong a
force as I commanded." It occurred to some of his soldiers, though,
that the rebels were going to let geography do their fighting for them.
Wide-eyed as the Illinois and Indiana farmboys were in this strange land,
that seemed altogether possible. First there had been the big river itself
— or himself; the Old Man, natives called the stream, taking their cue
from the Indians, who had named it the Father of Waters — the tawny,
mile-wide Mississippi, so thick with silt that recruits could almost believe
the steamboat hands who solemnly assured them that if you drank its
water for as much as a week "you will have a sandbar in you a mile
long." Then had come the smaller stream, with its currentless bayous
and mazy sloughs, whose very name was the Indian word for death. And
now there was this, the land itself, spongelike under their feet as they
came ashore, desolate as the back side of the moon and brooded over by
cypresses and water oaks with long gray beards of Spanish moss. North
was only a direction indicated by a compass — if a man had one, that is,
for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was
only the brooding desolation. If this was the country the rebs wanted to
take out of the Union, the blue-coated farmboys were ready to say
good riddance.
The molestation Sherman had said the Confederates did not dare
to attempt began the following day, December 27, against the navy.
Commander William Gwin, a veteran of all the river rights since Fort
Henry, took his ironclad Benton upstream to shell out some graybacks
lurking in the woods on the left flank, but got caught in a narrow stretch
of the river and was pounded by a battery on the bluffs. Three of the
t7<5] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
more than thirty hits came through the Benton's ports, cutting her
crew up badly, and Gwin, who refused to take cover in the shot-proof
pilothouse — "A captain's place is on the quarterdeck," he protested
when urged to step inside — was mortally wounded by an 8-inch solid
that took off most of his right arm and breast, exposing the ribs and lung
in a sudden flash of white and scarlet. Meanwhile the army was hav-
ing its share of opposition, too, as it floundered about in the Yazoo bot-
toms and tried to get itself aligned for the assault on the Walnut Hills.
The four division commanders, Brigadier Generals A. J. Smith,
M. L. Smith, G. W. Morgan, and Frederick Steele, were in the thick of
things next morning, dodging bullets like all the rest, when suddenly
their number was reduced to three by a sniper who hit the second Smith
in the hip joint and retired him from the campaign.
These two high-placed casualties only added to a confusion that
was rife enough already. Johnson's Farm, which was little more than a
patch of cleared ground in the midst of swampy woods, was separated
from the hills ahead by a broad, shallow bayou, a former bed of the
Yazoo, and hemmed in on the flanks by two others, Old River Bayou
on the right and Chickasaw Bayou on the left. All three looked much
alike to an unpracticed eye, so that there was much consequent loss of
direction, misidentification of objectives, and countermarching of col-
umns. A bridge ordered constructed over the shallow bayou to the
front was built by mistake over one of the others, too late to be relaid.
Whole companies got separated from their regiments and spent hours
ricocheting from one alien outfit to another. As a result of all this, and
more, it was Monday morning, December 29, before the objectives
could be assigned and pointed out on the ground instead of on the in-
adequate maps. Sherman's plan for overrunning the hilltop defenses was
for all four divisions to make "a show of attack along the whole front,"
but to concentrate his main effort at two points, half a mile apart, which
seemed to him to afford his soldiers the best chance for a penetration.
One of these was in front of Morgan's division, and when Sherman
pointed it out to him and told him what he wanted, Morgan nodded
positively. "General, in ten minutes after you give the signal I'll be on
those hills," he said.
His timing was a good deal off. Except for one brigade, which
"took cover behind the [opposite] bank, and could not be moved for-
ward," as Sherman later reported in disgust, Morgan not only did not
reach "those hills," he did not even get across the bayou, in ten or any
other number of minutes after the signal for attack was given by the
batteries all along the Federal line. Presently, however, it was dem-
onstrated that, all in all, this was perhaps the best thing to have done
in the situation in which their red-headed commander had placed them.
A brigade of Steele's division, led by Brigadier General Frank Blair, Jr.,
a former Missouri congressman and brother of the Postmaster General,
The Longest Journey [ 77 ]
got across in good order and excellent spirits, only to encounter a savage
artillery crossfire that sent it staggering back, leaving 500 killed,
wounded, and captured at the point where it had been struck. One
regiment kept going but was stopped by the steepness of the bluff and
a battery firing directly down the throats of the attackers. With their
hands they began to scoop out burrows in the face of the nearly per-
pendicular hillside, seeking overhead cover from enemy riflemen who
held their muskets out over the parapet and fired them vertically into
the huddled, frantically digging mass below. Indeed, so critical was their
position, as Sherman later said, "that we could not recall the men till
after dark, and then one at a time." He added, in summation of the day's
activities: "Our loss had been pretty heavy, and we had accomplished
nothing, and had inflicted little loss on our enemy."
"Pretty heavy" was putting it mildly, as he would discover
when he found time for counting noses, but the rest of this estimation
was accurate enough. Federal losses reached the commemorative figure
1776, of whom 208 were killed, 1005 were wounded, and 563 were
captured or otherwise missing. The Confederates lost 207 in all: 63 killed,
1 34 wounded, and 10 missing.
Unwilling to let it go at that — "We will lose 5000 men be-
fore we take Vicksburg," he had said, "and may as well lose them here
as anywhere else" — Sherman decided to reload Steele's division
aboard transports and move it upstream for a diversionary strike in the
vicinity of Haines Bluff, which might induce the defenders to
weaken their present line. Porter was no less willing than before. More-
over, by way of disposing of Brown's remaining torpedoes, he con-
ceived the idea of using one of the rams to clear the path. "I propose to
sent her ahead and explode them," he explained. "If we lose her, it does
not matter much." Colonel Charles R. Ellet, youthful successor to his
dead father as commander of the former army vessels, did not take to
this notion of a sacrificial ram. With Porter's consent, he added a 45-
foot boom extending beyond the prow and equipped it with pulleys
and cords and hooks for fishing up the floats and demijohns. Ram and
transports set out by the dark of the moon on the last night of the
year, while Sherman alerted his other three divisions for a second all-out
assault on the Walnut Hills as soon as they heard the boom of guns up-
stream. What came instead, at 4 a.m. on New Year's Day, was a note
from Steele, explaining that the boats were fog-bound and could not
proceed. So Sherman called a halt and took stock. He had been wait-
ing all this time for some word from Grant, either on the line of the
Yalobusha or here on the Yazoo, but there had been nothing since the
rumor of the fall of Holly Springs. From Vicksburg itself, ten air-line
miles away, its steeples visible from several points along his boggy front,
he had been hearing for the past three days the sound of trains arriving
and departing. It might be a ruse, as at Corinth back in May. On the
[78] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
other hand, it might signify what it sounded like: the arrival from
Grenada or Mobile or Chattanooga, or possibly all three, of reinforce-
ments for the rebel garrison. Also, rain had begun to fall by now in
earnest, and looking up he saw watermarks on the trunks of trees "ten
feet above our heads." In short, as he later reported, seeing "no good
reason for remaining in so unenviable a position any longer," he "became
convinced that the part of wisdom was to withdraw."
Withdraw he did, re-embarking his soldiers the following day
and proceeding downriver without delay. There was more room on the
decks of the transports now, and Sherman was low in spirits: not
because he was dissatisfied with his direction of the attempt — "There
was no bungling on my part," he wrote, "for I never worked harder or
with more intensity of purpose in my life" — but because he knew that
the journalists, whom he had snubbed at every opportunity since their
spreading of last year's rumors that he was insane, would have a field
day writing their descriptions of his repulse and retreat. Presently he
was hailed by Porter, who signaled him to come aboard the flagship.
Sherman did so, rain-drenched and disconsolate.
"I've lost 1700 men," he said, "and those infernal reporters will
publish all over the country their ridiculous stories about Sherman being
whipped."
"Pshaw," the admiral replied. "That's nothing; simply an epi-
sode of the war. You'll lose 17,000 before the war is over and think
nothing of it. We'll have Vicksburg yet, before we die. Steward! Bring
some punch."
When he got the red-head settled down he gave him the unwel-
come news that McClernand was at hand, anchored just inside the
mouth of the Yazoo and waiting to see him. Sherman, who could keep as
straight a face as his friend Grant when so inclined, afterwards remarked
of his rival's sudden but long-expected appearance on the scene: "It was
rumored he had come down to supersede me."
McClernand, too, had news for him when they met later that
day. Grant was not coming down through Mississippi; he had in fact
been in retreat for more than a week, leaving Pemberton free to con-
centrate for the defense of Vicksburg. Sherman suggested that this
meant that any further attempt against the town with their present force
was hopeless. Indeed, in the light of this disclosure, he began to consider
himself most fortunate in failure, even though it had cost him a total of
1848 casualties for the whole campaign. "Had we succeeded," he rea-
soned, "we might have found ourselves in a worse trap, when General
Pemberton was at full liberty to turn his whole force against us."
Dark-bearded McClernand agreed that the grapes were sour, at
least for now. Next day, January 3, he and Sherman withdrew their
troops from the Yazoo and rendezvoused again at Milliken's Bend,
where McClernand took command.
The Longest Journey [ 79 ]
"Well, we have been to Vicksburg and it was too much for
us and we have backed out," Sherman wrote his wife from the camp on
the west bank of the Mississippi. Reporting by dispatch to Grant, how-
ever, he went a bit more into detail as to causes. "I attribute our failure
to the strength of the enemy's position, both natural and artificial, and
not to his superior fighting," he declared; "but as we must all in the fu-
ture have ample opportunities to test this quality, it is foolish to discuss
it."
Pemberton would have agreed that it was foolish to discuss it, not
for the reason his adversary gave, but because he considered the question
already settled. The proof of the answer, so far as he was concerned, had
been demonstrated in the course of the past two weeks, during which
time he had stood off and repulsed two separate Union armies, each
superior in numbers to his own. What was more, he had gained new con-
fidence in his top commanders: in Van Dorn, whose lightning raid,
staged in conjunction with Forrest's in West Tennessee, had abolished
the northward menace: in the on-the-spot Vicksburg defenders, Major
General Martin L. Smith and Brigadier General Stephen D. Lee, who
with fewer than 15,000 soldiers, most of whom had arrived at the last
minute from Grenada, had driven better than twice as many bluecoats
out of their side yard, inflicting in the process about nine times as many
casualties as they suffered: and in himself, who had engineered the whole
and had been present for both repulses. Not that he did not expect to
have to fight a return engagement. He did. But he considered that this
would be no more than an occasion for redemonstrating what had been
proved already.
"Vicksburg is daily growing stronger," he wired Richmond soon
after New Year's. "We intend to hold it."
X 5 X
Rosecrans too was aware that haste made waste, but unlike Grant he
was having no part of it. In reply to Halleck's frequent urgings that he
move against Bragg and Chattanooga without delay — it was for this,
after all, that he had been appointed to succeed his fellow Ohioan, Don
Carlos Buell, whose characteristic attitude had seemed to his superiors
to be one of hesitation — he made it clear that he intended to take his
time. He would move when he got ready, not before, and thus, as he
put it, avoid having to "stop and tinker" along the way. His policy, he
explained in a series of answers to the telegraphic nudges, was "to lull
[the rebels] into security," then "press them up solidly" and "endeavor
to make an end of them." When Halleck at last lost patience altogether,
informing the general in early December that he had twice been asked to
designate a successor for him — "If you remain one more week in
[80] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
Nashville," he warned, "I cannot prevent your removal" — Rosecrans
set his heels in hard and bristled back at the general-in-chief : "I need no
other stimulus to make me do my duty than the knowledge of what it is.
To threats of removal or the like I must be permitted to say that I am
insensible."
"Old Rosy" the men called him, not only because of his colorful
name, but also because of his large red nose, which one observer clas-
sified as "intensified Roman." He was a tall, hale man, a heavy drinker
but withal an ardent Catholic; he carried a crucifix on his watch chain
and a rosary in his pocket, and he so delighted in small-hours religious
discussions that he sometimes kept his staff up half the night debating such
fine points as the distinction between profanity, which he freely em-
ployed, and blasphemy, which he eschewed. One such discussion
achieved marathon proportions, going on for ten nights running, and
though this was hard on the staff men, who missed their sleep, Rosecrans
considered the problem solved beforehand by the fact that, like himself,
they were all blond; "sandy fellows," he remarked upon occasion, were
"quick and sharp," and, being more industrious by nature than brunets,
required less rest — although he, for his own part, often slept till noon
on the day following one of the all-night sessions devoted to eschatology
or the question of how many angels could stand tiptoe on a pinpoint.
Like Bardolph, whom he so much resembled in physiognomy, he could
swing rapidly from gloom to equanimity or from abusiveness to affa-
bility. The bristly reply to Halleck was characteristic, for he
would often flare up on short notice; but he was likely to calm down just
as fast. All of a sudden, on the heels of an outburst of temper, he would
be all smiles and congeniality, stroking and cajoling the very man he had
been reviling a moment past, and if this was sometimes confusing to
those around him, it was also a rather welcome relief from the dour and
noncommittal Buell. Rosecrans was forty-three, two years younger
than his present opponent Bragg, who had graduated five years ahead
of him at West Point, where each had stood fifth in his class. Sometimes
he seemed older than his years, sometimes not, depending on his mood,
but in general he was liked and even admired, especially by the volun-
teers, who found him approachable and amusing. For instance, he would
stroll through the camps after lights-out, and if he saw a lamp still burn-
ing in one of the tents he would whack on the canvas with the flat of his
sword. The response, if not blasphemous, would at any rate be profane
and abusive. Prompt to apologize when they saw the red-nosed face of
their general appear through the tent flap, the soldiers would explain
that they had thought he was some rowdy prowling around in the dark.
He took it well, including the muffled laughter that followed the ex-
tinguishing of the lamp on his departure, and the result was a steady
growth of affection between him and the men of the army which Hal-
leck was protesting he was slow to commit to battle.
The Longest Journey [ 8 1 ]
That army's present over-all strength was 81,729 effectives, di-
vided like Grant's into Left Wing, Center, and Right Wing, commanded
respectively by Major Generals T. L. Crittenden, George Thomas, and
Alexander McCook, all veterans of the bloody October fight at Perry-
ville, Kentucky, under Buell. By mid-December — Halleck having more
or less apologized for the previous nudgings by explaining that they had
not been intended as "threats of removal or the like," but merely as ex-
pressions of the President's "great anxiety" over the fact that, Middle
Tennessee being the Confederacy's only late-summer gain which had
not been erased, pro-Southern members of the British parliament, sched-
uled to convene in January, might find in this apparent stalemate per-
suasive arguments for the intervention France was already urging —
Rosecrans became more optimistic, despite the drouth which kept the
Cumberland River too shallow for it to serve as a dependable supply
line. "Things will be ripe soon," he assured his nervous superiors on
the 15 th, and followed this dispatch with another, put on the wire
within an hour: "Rebel troops say they will fight us. . . . Cumberland
still very low; rain threatens; will be ready in a few days."
The few days stretched on to Christmas, and still he had not
moved. By then, however, he had received encouraging reports from
scouts and spies beyond the rebel lines. In the first place, Morgan and
Forrest were on the prowl, and though normally this would have been
considered alarming information, in this case it was not so, for the for-
mer was now so far in his rear as not to be able to interfere with any
immediate action south or east of Nashville, while the latter was clean
outside his department. Whatever harm they might do in Kentucky and
West Tennessee (which, as it turned out, was considerable) Rosecrans
could wish them Godspeed, so long as they kept their backs in his di-
rection. Moreover, he had learned of the visit to Murfreesboro by Jeffer-
son Davis and the subsequent detachment of one of Bragg's six divi-
sions to Pemberton. Now if ever was the time to strike, and the Union
commander was ready. Orders went out Christmas Day for the advance
to begin next morning in three columns: Crittenden on the left, march-
ing down the Murfreesboro turnpike through La Vergne and parallel-
ing the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad; McCook in the middle, cross-
country through Nolensville; Thomas on the right, due south through
Brentwood, then eastward across McCook's rear to take his rightful
position in the center. Each of the three "wings" was well below its
normal three-divisional strength because of guard detachments.
Thomas, for example, had left a whole division on garrison duty
at Nashville, in case Morgan or Forrest turned back or some other pack
of raiders struck in that direction while the main body was attending to
Bragg, and Crittenden and McCook were almost equally reduced by
piecemeal detachments on similar duty elsewhere along the lines of sup-
ply and communication. The result was that Rosecrans had barely
[82] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
44,000 troops in his three columns — Crittenden 14,500, Thomas
— 13,500, McCook 16,000 — or only a little more than half of his total
effective strength. But he was not ruffled by this reduction of the nu-
merical odds in his favor; he knew that he was still a good deal stronger
than his opponent. What was more, his deliberate preparations had
paid off. Not only would he be free of the necessity to "stop and
tinker" for lack of engineering equipment; he had within reach "the
essentials of ammunition and twenty days' rations." Thus he had no-
tified Washington on Christmas Eve, while planning the movement of
his eight attack divisions, and he added in regard to the enemy, thirty
miles southeastward down the pike: "If they meet us, we shall fight
tomorrow; if they wait for us, next day."
It was neither "tomorrow" nor the "next day" — which was in
fact the day he actually got started. Nor was it the day after that, or the
day after that, or even the day after that. Still, Rosecrans was not un-
duly perturbed. Delay had already gained him much, including the loss
by the Confederates of one infantry division and two brigades of cav-
alry; further delay might gain him more. Such was not the case, as it
turned out, but what fretted him most just now was the slashing effi-
ciency of the cavalry retained by Bragg, which cost the advancing Fed-
erals portions of their wagon train, as well as isolated detachments of
their own horsemen assigned to protect the flanks and rear of the main
body, slogging forward in three columns. As these drew near Alur-
freesboro on the 29th and 30th, consolidating at last to form a con-
tinuous line of battle along the west bank of the south fork of Stones
River, two miles short of the town, they began to encounter infantry
resistance, spasmodic at first and then determined, which seemed to
promise fulfillment of the vow Rosecrans had passed along to Halleck
two weeks before: "Rebel troops say they will fight us." However, he
had followed this with a vow of his own, which he also believed was
moving toward fulfillment: "If we beat them, I shall try to drive them
to the wall."
Bragg had 37,713 effectives, well under half as many as his op-
ponent, but he had them all at hand, with the result that the attackers
were only about fifteen percent stronger than the defenders. Not that
he considered himself committed to the tactical defensive. If the op-
portunity arose he intended to hit Rosecrans first, and hard. By way of
preparation, however, he wanted him within reach, and therefore he
gave his outpost commanders instructions to offer the advancing blue
columns no more than a token resistance. "General Bragg sent us word
not to fight them too much, but to let them come on," one gray cavalry-
man afterwards recalled.
In the course of the four-day Federal approach march — which
was impeded, but not "too much," by the nearly 4000 troopers under
The Longest Journey
[83
Lebanon
•BiurrfiMUt
NqUmJ^""*^ +* CRITTENDEN
OytoiLn 5
Triune • ^^x
-HARDEE
-RiadyMlU
Brigadier General Joseph Wheeler — Bragg assembled his 34,000 in-
fantry at Murfreesboro, the center of the wide arc along which his five
divisions had been disposed so as to cover the roads out of Nashville.
Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk's two-division corps was there al-
ready, and Lieutenant General William J. Hardee's came in on De-
cember 28 from Triune, fifteen miles west. With the arrival next day of
Major General John McCown's
division from Readyville, a dozen
miles east, the concentration was
complete, and the army formed
for combat astride Stones River,
which was f ordable at practically
all points because of the drouth.
Hardee was on the right, north-
west of the town and with a bend
of the river to his front; Polk was
on the left, due west of the town
and with another bend of the
river to his rear; McCown was in
reserve behind the center, which
was pierced by the Nashville turnpike and the Nashville & Chattanooga
Railroad, pointing arrow-straight in the direction from which Rosecrans
was expected. Except for Wheeler's horsemen, who, now that the con-
solidation of the infantry had been effected with time to spare, were
turned loose with a vengeance on the flanks and rear of the still ap-
proaching Federals, the Confederates settled down to wait for the open-
ing of the battle everyone knew was about to be fought.
Many of them — particularly the officers, whose opportunities
were larger in this respect — were still suffering from the aftereffects of
a Christmas which they had celebrated with the fervor of men
who knew only too well that the chances were strong that it would be
their last. "I felt feeble," a Georgia lieutenant wrote in his diary the
morning after, "but, being anxious to be with my men, reported for
duty." Things had been that way for weeks now. Murfreesboro, a for-
mer state capital named for a colonel in the Revolution, was a lively
place whose citizens, decidedly pro-rebel no matter which army hap-
pened to be in occupation, afforded their gray-clad defenders entertain-
ments and amusements of all kinds, including horse races, balls, whist
parties, and midnight gatherings in their parlors. President Davis's visit,
two weeks before, had been the occasion for much rejoicing and pride,
but all agreed that the social high point of the season had been the mar-
riage on December 14, the day after the President's departure, of
John Morgan and a local belle. Spirited in her defense of all things
southern, when she heard some northern officers disparaging the raider
during the Union occupation the previous summer, she told them off so
[84] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
roundly that one of the bluecoats asked her name. "It's Mattie Ready
now," she said. "But by the grace of God one day I hope to call myself
the wife of John Morgan." Hearing the story, the widower cavalry-
man came to call on her as soon as the town was again in southern hands,
and in due time — for the young lady was apparently as skilled in her
brand of tactics as the colonel was in his — they became engaged. Be-
cause of the size of the guest list, which included Bragg and his ranking
commanders, Morgan's fellow officers and kinsmen from Kentucky,
and a host of civilians invited from round about by the bride's family,
the wedding was held in the courtroom of the Murfreesboro court-
house, Leonidas Polk officiating and wearing over the uniform of a Con-
federate lieutenant general the vestments of an Episcopal bishop. Thus
it was that Mattie Ready, by the grace of God, became Mrs John
Hunt Morgan.
Within a week, apparently not content with his exploit at Harts-
ville earlier that month, the bridegroom was off on what would be
known as his Christmas Raid, a twofold celebration of his marriage and
the brigadier's commission recently handed him by the President him-
self. His goal, assigned by Bragg, was Rosecrans' supply line, specifically
the Louisville & Nashville Railroad north of Bowling Green, with
particular attention to be paid to the great trestles at Muldraugh's Hill.
He left Alexandria, thirty miles northeast of Murfreesboro, on De-
cember 21 with 2500 horsemen, crossed the Cumberland the following
day, and re-entered his home state the day after that. Passing through
Glasgow on the 24th, he forded the Green on Christmas Day, skir-
mishing as he went and taking prisoners by the hundreds, and struck sud-
denly north of Munfordville to lay siege to the Federal garrison at
Elizabethtown, which surrendered on the 27th, opening the way to
Muldraugh's Hill, where the garrison also surrendered. After burning
the trestles, enormous structures five hundred feet long and eighty
feet tall, he continued east through Bardstown to Springfield, then
turned south, skirting heavily garrisoned Lebanon and fighting off pur-
suers for a getaway through Campbellsville, Columbia, and Burkes-
ville, to reach Smithville, Tennessee, on January 5, fifteen miles south-
east of his starting point at Alexandria. In two weeks, having covered
better than 400 miles, he had fought four engagements and numerous
skirmishes. At a total cost of 2 men killed and 24 wounded, plus about
300 stragglers — victims not of enemy guns but of the weather, which
was bitter, and of confiscated bourbon — he had destroyed the vital
railroad trestles and four important bridges, along with an estimated
$2,000,000 in Union stores, and had torn up more than twenty miles
of L&N track, while capturing and paroling 1887 enemy soldiers.
Joe Wheeler, West Point '59, was not to be outdone by Morgan
or Forrest, who were his subordinates as a result of Bragg's appointment
of the twenty-six-year-old Georgian as commander of all the cavalry
The Longest Journey [ 85 ]
in the Army of Tennessee. Unleashed on the night of December 29,
after screening the concentration of the gray infantry in his rear and
delaying the advance of the blue columns to his front, he rode north on
the Lebanon pike with 2000 troopers, then swung west to Jefferson,
where he attacked a brigade of infantry on the march and gobbled up
a 20-wagon segment of Crittenden's supply train. At La Vergne by
noon, halfway to Nashville and well in the Union rear, he captured and
burned McCook's whole train of 300 wagons, packed with stores valued
by Wheeler at "many hundred thousands of dollars," and paroled 700
prisoners, including the teamsters and their escort. "The turnpike, as
far as the eye could reach, was filled with burning wagons," a Federal
officer reported when he rode through the town next morning and
surveyed the ruin the graybacks left behind. "The country was over-
spread with disarmed men [and] broken-down horses and mules. The
streets were covered with empty valises and trunks, knapsacks, broken
guns, and all the indescribable debris of a captured and rifled army train."
Wheeler and his horsemen were over the southwest horizon by then,
having taken two more trains, one at Rock Spring and another at
Nolensville. Beyond there, more prisoners were paroled while the
weary raiders snatched a few hours' sleep before swinging back into
their saddles and heading east for Murfreesboro to rejoin the infantry
drawn up along Stones River. Completing his two-day circuit of Rose-
crans — in the course of which he had captured more than a thousand
men, destroyed all or parts of four wagon trains, brought off enough
rifles and carbines to arm a brigade, remounted all of his troopers who
needed fresh horses, and left a train of devastation along both flanks
and around the rear of the entire Union army — Wheeler made contact
with Bragg's left at 2 a.m. on the last day of the year, in time for a share
in the battle which was now about to open.
A certain amount of reshuffling had occurred during his absence.
Rosecrans, coming forward with his main body on the 30th while
Wheeler was clawing at his flanks and rear, put his three corps in line,
left to right, Crittenden and Thomas and McCook, the first opposite
Hardee, the second opposite Polk, and the third — the largest of the
three — opposite nothing more than a thin line of skirmishers extend-
ing the rebel left. Because of skillful screening by the gray cavalry
during the approach march, the Federal commander was not aware of
the opportunity he had created for a lunge straight into Murfreesboro
around the Confederate flank; but Bragg was, and he moved at once to
correct his dispositions, shifting McCown's reserve division from its
post behind the center to a position on Polk's left, extending his line of
battle southward to meet the threat. Rosecrans meanwhile was plan-
ning and issuing orders for an attack. His intention was to execute a
right wheel, sending Crittenden forward on the north, with instructions
[86] THE CIVIL WAR:»" 1862
to pivot on the left of Thomas, who would also move forward in se-
quence to assist in the capture of the town, cutting the rebels off from
their supplies and setting them up for annihilation. McCook was thus to
serve as anchor man. "If the enemy attacks you," Rosecrans told him,
"fall back slowly, refusing your right, contesting the ground inch by
inch. If the enemy does not attack you, you will attack him, not vig-
orously but warmly." As an added piece of deception, McCook was
ordered about 6 p.m. to build a line of fires beyond his right, simulating
a prolongation of his line so as to draw Bragg's attention away from
the main effort at the far end of the field.
The southern commander was indeed deceived, and quite as
thoroughly as Rosecrans had intended, but his reaction was something
different from what the northern commander had hoped for. Or, rather,
it was what he had hoped for, only more so. When Bragg observed the
fires and heard sounds of movement on the Federal right, not only did
he take the bait, but he proceeded, so to speak, to run away with it. De-
vising an offensive of his own to meet what he conceived to be a new
threat to his left, he instructed Hardee, whose two divisions were un-
der Major Generals John C. Breckinridge and Patrick R. Cleburne, to
leave the former posted where it was, guarding the river crossings on the
right, and move the latter southward to a position in support of
McCown, who had been shifted earlier that day. Hardee himself was to
come along, moreover, and take command of these two divisions on the
left for a slashing assault on the Federals seemingly massed in that di-
rection. Bragg's plans called for a right wheel by both corps on the west
bank of Stones River, with the pivot on Polk's right division near the
Nashville pike, the brigades attacking in rapid sequence from left to
right, obliquing northward as they advanced, in order to throw the
bluecoats back against the stretch of river whose crossings were cov-
ered by Breckinridge's guns and infantry.
Just before tattoo, while this additional shift was being com-
pleted under cover of darkness and orders were going out for the assault
next morning, the military bands of both armies began to play their
respective favorite tunes. Carrying sweet and clear on the windless win-
try air, the music of any one band was about as audible on one side of
the line as on the other, and the concert thus became something of a
contest, a musical bombardment. "Dixie" answered the taunting "Yan-
kee Doodle"; "Hail Columbia" followed "The Bonnie Blue Flag."
Finally, though, one group of musicians began to play the familiar
"Home Sweet Home," and one by one the others took it up, until at last
all the bands of both armies were playing the song. Soldiers on both
sides of the battle line began to sing the words, swelling the chorus east
and west, North and South. As it died away on the final line — "There's
no-o place like home" — the words caught in the throats of men, who,
bluecoat and butternut alike, would be killing each other tomorrow in
The Longest Journey [ 87 ]
what already gave promise of being one of the bloodiest battles in that
fratricidal war.
• • •
As at First Manassas, a year and a half ago, both commanders had
identical plans of battle: in this case, an advance on the left to strike the
enemy right. Here as there, if they had moved simultaneously, the two
armies might have grappled and swung round and round, like a pair of
dancers clutching each other and twirling to the accompaniment of
cannon. So it might have been, but it was not. For one thing, the lines
were closer together on the south than on the north, and there was no
natural obstacle such as the river to delay the Confederate attack in its
initial stages. For another, with his usual attention to preparatory mat-
ters, Rosecrans had told his generals to advance as soon as possible after
breakfast; whereas Bragg, with less concern for the creature com-
forts, had called for a dawn assault, and that was what he got.
McCown went forward in the steely twilight before sunrise,
Cleburne following 400 yards behind. Between them they had 10,000
men and McCook had 16,000, but the latter were still preparing break-
fast when the rebel skirmishers, preceding a long gray double line of in-
fantry extending left and right, shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye
could reach, broke through the cedar thickets and bore down on them,
yelling. Coming as it did, with all the advantage of surprise, the charge
was well-nigh irresistible. A Tennessee private later recalled that his
brigade, in the front rank of the attackers, "swooped down on those
Yankees like a whirl-a-gust of woodpeckers in a hail storm." The fact
was, in this opening phase, everything went so smoothly for the ag-
gressors that even their mistakes seemed to work to their advantage.
When McCown, who had had little combat experience, having been
left behind in command of Knoxville during the invasion of Kentucky,
drifted wide because he neglected to oblique to the right as instructed,
Pat Cleburne, whose soldierly qualities had grown steadily since Shiloh
despite the wounds he had taken at Richmond and Perryville, moved
neatly forward into the gap without even the need to pause for align-
ment. Advancing on this extended front the two divisions swept every-
thing before them, their captures including several front-line batteries
taken before the cannoneers could leap to their posts and get a round
off. Such knots of bluecoats as managed to form for individual resistance
in clumps of cedar or behind outcroppings of rock, finding themselves
suddenly outflanked on the left or right, cried as they had cried under
Buell twelve weeks before: "We are sold! Sold again!" and broke for
the rear, discarding their weapons as they ran.
McCook's three divisions, on line from right to left under Briga-
dier Generals R. W. Johnson, Jefferson Davis, and Philip Sheridan,
caught the full force of the initial assault. Johnson and Davis were under
[88] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
personal clouds, the former because he had been captured by Morgan
early that month and exchanged on the eve of battle, the latter because
of his assassination of Major General William Nelson in a Lousiville
hotel lobby back in September; but they had little chance to earn re-
demption here. Johnson's division, on the far right of the army, prac-
tically disintegrated on contact, losing within the opening half-hour
more than half its members by sudden death, injury, or capture. Davis,
next in line, fared scarcely better, though most of his men at least had
time to put up a show of resistance before falling back, dribbling skulk-
ers as they went. That left Sheridan. As pugnacious here as he had
been at Perryville, where he first attracted general attention, the
bandy-legged, bullet-headed Ohioan was determined to yield no ground
except under direct pressure, and only then when that pressure buckled
his knees. "Square-shouldered, muscular, wiry to the last degree, and
as nearly insensible to hardship and fatigue as is consistent with human-
ity" — thus a staff man saw him here, on the eve of his thirty-second
birthday — he rode his lines, calling on his men to stand firm while the
storm of battle drew nearer, then broke in fury against his front.
Polk's corps, with its two divisions under Major Generals J. M.
Withers and Benjamin Cheatham, had taken up the assault by now, and
it was Withers who struck Sheridan first — and suffered the first Con-
federate repulse. The Federals were in a position described by one
of its defenders as "a confused mass of rock, lying in slabs, and boulders
interspersed with holes, fissures, and caverns which would have made
progress over it extremely difficult even if there had been no timber."
But there was timber, a thick tangle of cedars whose trunks "ran straight
up into the air so near together that the sunlight was obscured." Fight-
ing here, with all that was happening on the right or left hidden from
them "except as we could gather it from the portentous avalanches of
sound which assailed us from every direction," Sheridan's men repulsed
three separate charges by Withers. Then Cheatham came up. A vet-
eran of Mexico and all the army's battles since Belmont, where he had
saved the day, Cheatham was forty-two, a native Tennessean, and had
earned the distinction of being the most profane man in the Army of
Tennessee, despite the disadvantage in this respect of having as his corps
commander the distinguished and watchful Bishop of Louisiana. "Give
'em hell, boys!" he shouted as he led his division forward. Polk, who
was riding beside him, approved of the intention if not of the unchurchly
language. "Give them what General Cheatham says, boys!" he cried.
"Give them what General Cheatham says! "
That was what they gave them, though they received in return a
goodly measure of the same. Sheridan, down to his last three rounds
and having lost the first of his three brigade commanders, his West
Point classmate Brigadier General Joshua Sill — he would lose the
other two before the day was over — fell back under knee-buckling
The Longest Journey
[89]
pressure from Cheatham in front and Cleburne on the flank, abandoning
eight guns in the thicket for lack of horses to draw them off. He then
replenished his ammunition and took a position back near the Nashville
turnpike, facing south and east alongside Brigadier General J. S. Neg-
ley's division, one of the two belonging to Thomas, who had been
forced to give ground during the struggle. It was now about 10 o'clock;
Bragg's initial objectives had been attained, along with the capture of
28 guns and no less than 3000 soldiers. The enemy right had been driven
three miles and the center had also given way, until now the Union line
of battle resembled a half-closed jackknife, most of it being at right
angles to its original position. Bragg was about to open the second phase,
intending to break the knife at the critical juncture of blade and handle;
after which would come the third phase, the mop-up.
Rosecrans meanwhile had used to good advantage the interlude
afforded him by Sheridan's resistance, though it was not until the battle
had been raging for more than an hour that he realized he was face to
face with probable disaster. For some time, indeed, having joined Crit-
tenden on the left so as to supervise the opening attack, he assumed that
what was occurring on the right — the uproar being considerably di-
minished by distance and acoustical peculiarities — was in accordance
with his instructions to McCook, whereby Bragg had been deceived
Miltis /
Murfretsboro
[ 9 o] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
into stripping the flank about to be assaulted, in order to bolster the
flank beyond which the untended campfires had been kindled the night
before. One of Crittenden's divisions was already crossing Stones
River, and he was preparing to follow with the other two. Not even the
arrival of a courier from McCook, informing Rosecrans that he was
being assailed and needed reinforcements, changed the Federal com-
mander's belief in this regard.
"Tell General McCook to contest every inch of ground," he told
the courier, repeating his previous instructions. "If he holds them we
will swing into Murfreesboro with our left and cut them off." To his
staff he added, with apparent satisfaction: "It's working right."
Discovering presently, however, that it was "working" not for
him but for Bragg, who was using his own battle plan against him and
had got the jump in the process — with the result that McCook, far
from being able to conduct an inch-by-inch defense, had lost control of
two of his three divisions before he was able to conduct a defense that
was even mile-by-mile — Rosecrans reacted fast. To one observer he
seemed "profoundly moved," but that was putting it rather mildly. Even
his florid nose "had paled and lost its ruddy luster," the officer added,
the glow apparently having been transferred to his eyes, which "blazed
with sullen fire." Canceling the advance on the left, he told Critten-
den to send the two uncrossed divisions of Brigadier Generals John
Palmer and Thomas Wood to reinforce the frazzled right. Brigadier
General Horatio Van Cleve's division was to be recalled from the op-
posite bank of the river and sent without delay after the others, except
for one brigade which would be left to guard against a crossing, in case
the rebels tried to follow up the withdrawal in this quarter. Crittenden
passed the word at once, and: "Goodbye, General," Wood replied as
he set out in the direction of the uproar, which now was swelling louder
as it drew nearer. "We'll all meet at the hatter's, as one coon said to an-
other when the dogs were after them."
Rosecrans had no time for jokes. His exclusive concern just
now was the salvation of his army, and it seemed to him that there was
only one way for this to be accomplished. "This battle must be won,"
he said. He intended to see personally to all the dispositions, especially
on the crumbling right, but first he needed a feeling of security on the
left — if for no other purpose than to be able to forget it. Accordingly,
accompanied by his chief of staff, he rode to the riverbank position of
the one brigade Van Cleve had left behind to prevent a rebel crossing,
and inquired who commanded.
"I do, sir," a colonel said, stepping forward. He was Samuel W.
Price, a Union-loyal Kentuckian.
"Will you hold this ford?" Rosecrans asked him.
"I will try, sir," Price replied.
Unsatisfied, Rosecrans repeated: "Will you hold this ford?"
The Longest Journey [ 91 ]
"I will die right here," the colonel answered stoutly.
Still unsatisfied, for he was less interested in the Kentuckian's
willingness to lay down his life than he was in his ability to prevent a
rebel crossing, the general pressed the question a third time: "Will you
hold this ford?"
"Yes, sir," Price said.
"That will do," Rosecrans snapped, and having at last got the
answer he wanted, turned his horse and galloped off.
As he drew near the tumult of battle, which by now was ap-
proaching the turnpike on the right, he received another shock in the
form of a cannonball which, narrowly missing him, tore off the head of
his chief of staff, riding beside him, and so bespattered Rosecrans that
whoever saw him afterwards that morning assumed at first sight that he
was badly wounded. "Oh, no," he would say, in response to expressions
of concern. "That is the blood of poor Garesche." However, this did
nothing to restrict or slow his movements; he would not even pause to
change his coat. "At no one time, and I rode with him during most of
the day," a signal officer afterwards reported, "do I remember of his
having been one half-hour at the same place." To Crittenden, whose
troops he was using as a reserve in order to shore up the line along the
turnpike, he "seemed ubiquitous," and to another observer he appeared
"as firm as iron and fixed as fate" as he moved about the field, rallying
panicked men and hoicking them into line. "This battle must be won,"
he kept repeating.
Arriving in time to meet Sheridan, who had just been driven
back, he directed him to refill his cartridge boxes from the ammuni-
tion train and to fall in alongside Negley and Major General Lovell
Rousseau, commanding Thomas's other division. As a result of such
stopgap improvisations, adopted amid the confusion of retreat, there was
much intermingling of units and a resultant loss of control by division
and corps commanders. Some of Crittenden's brigades were on the right
with McCook, who had set up a straggler line along which he
was doing what he could to rally the remnants of Johnson and Davis,
and some of McCook's brigades were on the left with Crittenden, who
was nervously making his dispositions on unfamiliar ground. Between
them, with his two divisions consolidated and supported by Van Cleve,
George Thomas was calm as always, whatever the panic all around him.
Where his left joined Crittenden's right there was a salient, marking
the point where the half-closed knife blade joined the handle, and
within this angle, just east of the pike and on both sides of the railroad,
there was a slight elevation inclosed by a circular four-acre clump of
cedars, not unlike the one Sheridan had successfully defended against
three separate all-out rebel assaults that morning. Known locally as the
Round Forest, this tree-choked patch of rocky earth was presently
dubbed "Hell's Half-Acre" by the soldiers; for it was here that Bragg
[92] THE CIVIL WAR3T1862
seemed most determined to score a breakthrough, despite the heavy con-
centration of artillery of all calibers which Rosecrans had massed on
the high ground directly in its rear.
He struck first, and hard, with a brigade of Mississippians from
Withers. They surged forward across fields of unpicked cotton, yelling
as they had yelled at Shiloh, where they had been the farthest to
advance, and were staggered by rapid-fire volleys from fifty guns
ranked hub to hub on the high ground just beyond the clump of dark-
green trees. At that point-blank range, one cannoneer remarked, the
Federal batteries "could not fire amiss." Deafened by the uproar, the
Confederates plucked cotton from the fallen bolls and stuffed it in their
ears. Still they came on — to be met, halfway across, by sheets of mus-
ketry from the blue infantry close-packed under cover of the cedars;
whereupon, some regiments having lost as many as half a dozen
color-bearers, the Mississippians wavered and fell back, leaving a third
of their number dead or wounded in the furrows or lying crosswise to
the blasted rows. Next to try it, about noon, was a Tennessee brigade
from Cheatham, which lately had helped throw Sheridan out of a simi-
lar position. They charged through the rattling dry brown stalks, yell-
ing with all the frenzy of those who had come this way before, but with
no better luck. They too were repulsed, and with even cruder losses.
More than half of the men of the 16th Tennessee were casualties, while
the 8th Tennessee lost 306 out of the 424 who had started across the
fields in an attempt to drive the bluecoats out of the Round Forest.
Bragg was by no means resigned, as yet, to the fact that this could
not be done. Though he had no reserves at hand — McCown and
Cleburne were still winded from their long advance, around and over
the original Federal right, and Withers and Cheatham had just been
fought to a frazzle by the newly established left — the five-brigade
division of Breckinridge, the largest in the army, was still posted beyond
the river, having contributed nothing to the victory up to this point ex-
cept the shells its batteries had been throwing from an east-bank hill
which the former Vice President had been instructed to hold at all costs,
as "the key to the position." So far, he had had no trouble doing this,
despite an early-morning cavalry warning that a large body of enemy
troops had crossed the river well upstream and was headed in his di-
rection. This was of course Van Cleve's division, whose advance had
been spotted promptly, but whose subsequent withdrawal had gone
unnoticed or at any rate unreported; so that when Bragg's order came,
about 1 o'clock, for him to leave one brigade to guard the right while he
marched to the support of Polk and Hardee with the other four, Breckin-
ridge was alarmed and sent back word that it was he who needed rein-
forcements; the enemy, in heavy force, was moving upon him even now,
intending to challenge his hold on "the key to the position." Bragg's
reply was a peremptory repetition of the order, which left the Kentuck-
The Longest Journey [ 93 ]
ian no choice except to obey. He sent two brigades at 2 o'clock, and
followed with the other two himself, about an hour later.
That way, they came up piecemeal, and piecemeal they were
fed into the hopper. The Federals, allowed an hour or more in which to
improve their dispositions in the Round Forest and replenish the am-
munition for the guns posted just behind it, caught the third wave of at-
tackers much as they had caught the first and second, naked in the open
fields, with devastating effect. Here again there was no lack of valor.
One defender said of the charge that it was "without doubt the most
daring, courageous, and best-executed attack which the Confeder-
ates made on our line between pike and river." But it broke in blood, as
the others had done, and the survivors fell back across the fields, leaving
their dead and wounded behind with the dead and wounded Tennesseans
and Mississippians. Again there was a lull, until about 4 o'clock, when
the last two brigades arrived from Breckinridge and the fourth gray
wave rolled out across the fields of cotton.
"The battle had hushed," a Union brigadier reported, "and the
dreadful splendor of this advance can only be conceived, as all de-
scriptions must fall vastly short." While the attackers moved forward,
"steadily, and, as it seemed, to certain victory," he added, "I sent back
all my remaining staff successively to ask for support, and braced up
my own lines as perfectly as possible." The bracing served its purpose;
for though the defenders suffered heavily, too — it was here that Sheri-
dan lost the third of his three brigade commanders — the charge was
repulsed quite as decisively as the others. The sun went down at 4.30 and
the racket died away. After eleven hours of uproar, a mutual hush fell
over the glades and copses, and the brief winter twilight faded into
the darkness before moonrise.
Bragg's losses had been heavy — about 9000 — but he had reason
to believe that the enemy's, which included several thousand prisoners,
had been much heavier. Moreover, in thus reversing the usual casualty
ratio between attacker and defender, he had not only foiled the attempt
to throw him out of his position covering Murfreesboro and Chatta-
nooga; he had overrun the original Union position at every point
where he had applied pressure, driving major portions of the blue line
as far as three miles backward and taking guns and colors in abundance
as he went. By all the logic of war, despite their stubborn stand that
afternoon in the Round Forest, the Federals were whipped, and now
they would have to accept the consequences. As Bragg saw it, they had
little choice in this respect. They could stay and suffer further reverses,
amounting in the end to annihilation; or they could retreat, hoping to
find sanctuary in the Nashville intrenchments. Perhaps because it was
the one he himself would have chosen, he believed the latter course to be
the one Rosecrans was most likely to adopt. At any rate, this opinion
[94] THE CIVIL WAR^"1862
seemed presently to have been confirmed by the arrival of outpost re-
ports informing him that long lines of wagons had been heard rumbling
through the darkness behind the Union lines and along the Nashville
pike. Elated by this apparent chance to catch the northern army strung
out on the roads and ripe for slaughter, Bragg prepared to follow in
the morning. Proudly reviewing today's accomplishments while antici-
pating tomorrow's, he got off a wire to Richmond before he went to
bed: "The enemy has yielded his strong position and is falling back.
We occupy whole field and shall follow him. . . . God has granted us
a happy New Year."
He was mistaken, at least in part. The rumble of wagons, north-
westward along the turnpike, had not signified an attempt on the part
of the Federal commander to save his trains before the commencement
of a general retreat, but rather was the sound made by a long cavalcade
of wounded — part of today's total of about 12,000 Union casualties
— being taken back to the Tennessee capital for treatment in the mili-
tary hospitals established there as another example of foresight and care-
ful preparation. Not that Rosecrans had given no thought to a with-
drawal. He had indeed. In fact, in an attempt to make up his mind as to
the wisdom of retreating, he was holding a council of war to debate the
matter and share the responsibility of the decision, even as Bragg was
composing his victory message. It was a stormy night, rain beating hard
on the roof of the cabin which Rosecrans had selected the day before as
his headquarters beside the Nashville pike, never suspecting that the
battle line would be drawn today practically on its doorstep. All
three of his corps commanders were present, along with a number of
their subordinates, and all presented a rather bedraggled aspect, "bat-
tered as to hats, tousled as to hair, torn as to clothes, and depressed as to
spirits." An adjutant in attendance described them thus, and added: "If
there was a cheerful-expressioned face present I did not see it."
After a long silence, broken only by the drumming of rain on
shingles, Rosecrans began the questioning, addressing the several gen-
erals in turn, clockwise as they sat about the room. "General McCook,
have you any suggestions for tomorrow?" Smooth-shaven and round-
faced, the thirty-one-year-old McCook was somewhat more subdued
tonight than he had been on the night after Perryville — where, as
here, his had been the corps that was surprised and routed — but he
showed by his reply that at least a part of his rollicking nature still re-
mained. "No," he said. "Only I would like for Bragg to pay me for my
two horses lost today." Others were gloomier and more forthright, ad-
vising retreat as the army's best way out its predicament. Characteristi-
cally, George Thomas had fallen asleep in his chair before the discussion
got well under way. When the word "retreat" came through to him,
he opened his eyes. "This army doesn't retreat," he muttered, and fell
back into the sleep he had emerged from. The discussion thus inter-
The Longest Journey [ 95 ]
rupted was resumed, but it led to no clear-cut decision before the
council broke up and the commanders returned to their units. Except
for incidental tactical adjustments, specifically authorized from above,
they would hold their present positions through tomorrow, unless they
received alternate instructions before dawn.
Still undecided, Rosecrans rode out for a midnight inspection of
his lines, in the course of which he looked out across the fields and saw
an alarming sight. On the far side of Overall's Creek, which crossed the
turnpike at right angles and covered his right flank and rear, firebrands
were moving in the night. The explanation was actually simple:
Federal cavalrymen, suffering from the cold, had disobeyed orders
against kindling fires and were carrying brands from point to point
along the outpost line: but Rosecrans, never suspecting that his orders
would be flaunted in this fashion, assumed that they were rebels. "They
have got entirely in our rear," he said, "and are forming line of battle
by torchlight!" With retreat no longer even a possibility, let alone an
alternative — or so at any rate he thought — he returned at once to
army headquarters and, adopting the dramatic phraseology of the Ken-
tucky colonel which he had rejected that morning beside the upper
Stones River ford, sent word for his subordinates to "prepare to fight
or die."
Except for the surgeons and the men they worked on, blue and
gray, whose screams broke through the singing of the bone saws, both
sides were bedded down by now amid the wreckage and the corpses,
preparing to sleep out as best they could the last night of the year. Simul-
taneously, from a balcony of the Mobile Battle House, Jefferson Davis
lifted the hearts of his listeners with a review of recent Confederate suc-
cesses, unaware that even as he spoke the list was about to be lengthened
by John Magruder, whose two-boat navy of cotton-clads was steam-
ing down Buffalo Bayou to recapture Galveston. Lee's Army of North-
ern Virginia still occupied the field of its two-weeks-old long-odds
victory on the southwest bank of the Rappahannock, and the Federal
invaders from coastal North Carolina were back beneath the shelter of
their siege guns, licking the wounds they had suffered in their repulse
along the Neuse. In North Mississippi, where Van Dorn was resting his
troopers after their exploits in Holly Springs and beyond the Tennessee
line, Grant was in retreat on Memphis, while Sherman, three hundred
winding miles downriver, was counting his casualties under Chickasaw
Bluff and preparing to give it one more try before falling back down
the Yazoo to meet the general whose army he had kidnaped and de-
pleted to no avail. Forrest and Morgan, the former moving east from
Parker's Crossroads, the latter riding south through Campbellsville,
both having eluded their pursuers, were returning in triumph from dis-
ruptive raids on their respective home regions in West Tennessee and
Kentucky. In all these scattered theaters, where so recently the Con-
[96] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
federacy had seemed at best to be approaching near-certain disaster,
fortune had smiled on southern arms; yet nowhere did her smile seem
broader than here, southeast of Nashville and northwest of vital Chat-
tanooga, where Bragg with such alacrity had snatched up the gage flung
down by Rosecrans and struck him smartly with it, first on the flank, a
smashing blow, and then between the eyes. Now both rested from their
injuries and exertions. Wrapped in their blankets, those who had them,
the soldiers of both armies huddled close to fires they had kindled
against orders. The waxing moon set early and the wind veered and
blew coldly from the north; the screams of the wounded died away with
the singing of the bone saws. Unlike the night before, on the eve of car-
nage, there were no serenades tonight, no mingled choruses of "Home
Sweet Home," for even the bandsmen had fought in this savage battle,
and expected to have to fight again tomorrow, bringing in the new year
as they had ushered out the old.
So they thought; but they were wrong, at least so far as the
schedule was concerned. Though there were tentative skirmishes, fitful
exchanges of artillery fire, and some readjustment of the tactical dis-
positions on both sides, New Year's Day saw nothing like the carnival
of death that had been staged on New Year's Eve. In point of fact, the
two armies were rather like two great jungle cats who, having fought
to mutual exhaustion, were content — aside, that is, from the more or
less secret hope on the part of each that the other would slink away —
to eye one another balefully, limiting their actions to licking their
wounds and emitting only occasional growls and rumbles, while storing
up strength to resume the mortal contest.
Considerably surprised, in the light of last night's cavalry reports
of a withdrawal, to find the enemy not only still there, but still there in
line of battle, Bragg sent Polk forward about midmorning to discover
what effect a prod would have. He soon found out. Though the troops
moved unopposed into the Round Forest, which Rosecrans had ordered
evacuated so as to straighten out his line, and which in turn gave validity
to the bishop's subsequent claim that "the opening of the new year
found us masters of the field," Polk encountered resistance just beyond
it too stiff to permit his men to emerge from the woods on the far side.
All he had gained for his pains were more blue corpses, along with the
unwelcome task of digging their graves in order to rid his nostrils of
their stench. Likewise, on the Union left, Rosecrans advanced Van
Cleve's division — now under Colonel Samuel Beatty; Van Cleve had
caught a bullet in the leg — beyond Stones River, retracing the route
it had taken the previous morning by moving today into the vacuum
created by the withdrawal of Breckinridge the afternoon before, and
occupied a hill overlooking the ford, These were the only major read-
The Longest Journey [ 97 ]
adjustments, North or South, though the Federals were reinforced by
a brigade arrived from Nashville, accompanied as one officer said by
"an army of stragglers" picked up along the pike. For the most part, the
soldiers on both sides roved the field, looking for fallen comrades among
the wounded and the slain. The search for food was even more intensive,
and for once, as a result of Wheeler's depredations in the course of his
prebattle ride around the Union forces, the Yankees were worse off in
this respect than the rebels. One brigade commander later recorded that
he made his supper off a piece of raw pork and a few crackers he found
in his pocket. No food had ever tasted sweeter, he declared. Even so
high-ranking an officer as Crittenden was not exempt from want, but
as he went to bed, complaining of hunger pangs, he was delighted to
hear his orderly say he could get him "a first-rate beefsteak." The
Kentuckian accepted the offer gladly, and presently, when the prom-
ised meal was brought, consumed it with gusto — only to learn next
morning that the "beefsteak" had been cut from a horse that had been
killed in the battle. "I didn't know this at the time I ate it," he afterwards
explained, somewhat ruefully.
Day ended; night came down. Although Rosecrans had no ap-
parent notion of resuming the offensive, or indeed any definite plan at
all beyond holding onto the ground he had fallen back to, he was pleased
to have had this day-long opportunity to consolidate his forces and re-
cover in some measure from the shock to his army and his nervous
system. Bragg on the other hand seemed to have no more of a plan than
his opponent. Convinced that he had won a victory, he apparently did
not know what to do with it beyond setting various details to work
collecting the arms and materiel scattered about the field and paroling
the thousands of captives he had taken the day before. What he mainly
wanted, still, was for the enemy to admit defeat by retreating, and thus
substantiate his claim; then he would follow, as he had promised in his
wire to Richmond, hoping to catch the blue mass in motion on the pike
and tear its flanks and rear, which now were inaccessible to him be-
yond the guns parked hub to hub behind the long lines of close-spaced
bayonets weaving in and out of the cedar brakes and among the gray
outcroppings of rock that scarred the landscape. The prospect was alto-
gether grim. After nightfall, however, he was again encouraged by
cavalry reports that well-guarded Federal trains were in motion on the
roads leading back to Nashville. If this meant what Bragg hoped it did,
that the Unionists were finally admitting they were whipped and were
preparing to retire, bag and baggage, he would be up and after them
tomorrow.
Tomorrow's dawn showed the prospect unimproved. Whatever
might be moving along the rearward roads, the bayonets defining the
Union front glinted quite as close-spaced as ever and the guns
frowned every bit as grim. In fact, as Bragg conducted a personal in-
[98] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
spection of his lines that morning, combining with it a long-range bin-
ocular reconnaissance of the enemy position, he began to perceive that,
despite his bloodless occupation of the Round Forest, which increased
his claim to the honors of the field, it was his own army which was in the
graver danger as a result of yesterday's tactical readjustments. The ad-
vance of Van Cleve's division, which put it in possession of the
hill just east of the river, gave him particular concern. Artillery em-
placed on that height could fire across the stream and enfilade Polk's
flank if he attempted to advance. With this in mind, Bragg decided the
enemy guns must be dislodged. Accordingly he sent for Breckinridge,
whose troops had returned to their east-bank position north of Mur-
freesboro, along a ridge about a mile short of the hill overlooking the
ford. When the former Vice President reached army headquarters, un-
der a large sycamore that stood alongside the Nashville pike just west of
the wrecked bridge that had spanned Stones River, Bragg told him what
he wanted. He was going to resume the offensive by sending Polk for-
ward, he explained. First, though, he wanted Van Cleve's men flung off
the dominant height. This was admittedly a tough assignment, he con-
tinued, but to protect the attackers from the added strain of having to
repulse a counterattack, he was directing that the movement be made
less than an hour before sundown, which would give the Federals no
time to reorganize or bring up reinforcements before dark. Then next
morning Polk could jump off, not only with his flank secure, but also
with the enemy mouse-trapped out of position to his front.
Breckinridge, who was not yet forty-two despite his dis-
tinguished prewar career in national politics — a hearty-looking man
with a prominent forehead, somewhat bulging eyes, a plump but firm
jaw, and the swooping dark mustache of a Sicilian brigand, he was a
leading contender among the many candidates for the title of the hand-
somest general in the southern army — protested at once and for all he
was worth. The hill was well-nigh impregnable, he said, and Van
Cleve's division had now been reinforced by two brigades from Palmer;
besides which, he added, guns from the main Union line across the river
would tear his flank as he advanced, thus exposing his men to the very
horror he would be sparing Polk's if he was successful, which was
doubtful. Warming to the subject, he took up a stick and began to draw
in the soft dirt a map that emphasized the difficulty of the terrain. Bragg
stopped him in mid-sketch. The Kentuckian had delayed the battle two
days ago with similar protests which had turned out to be ill-founded,
and the army commander was having no more of that. "Sir," Bragg
said curtly, "my information is different. I have given the order to at-
tack the enemy in your front and expect it to be obeyed."
That was that, and Breckinridge returned to his troops, most of
whom were Bluegrass natives like himself, exiles from their homeland
since midwinter nearly a year ago; "my poor orphans," he sometimes
The Longest Journey [ 99 ]
called them, jokingly but not without an undertone of sadness and
homesickness. Rejoining them he sought out his friend Brigadier Gen-
eral William Preston — now commanding one of his brigades, but for-
merly chief of staff to his brother-in-law Albert Sidney Johnston, who
had died in his arms at Shiloh — to whom he now addressed himself con-
cerning the assignment he had just been given. "General Preston," he
said, speaking formally and with a tone that strangely combined de-
jection and determination, "this attack is made against my judgment and
by the special orders of General Bragg. Of course we all must try to do
our duty and fight the best we can. But if it should result in disaster and
I be among the slain, I want you to do justice to my memory and tell the
people that I believed this attack to be very unwise and tried to prevent
it." And having thus unburdened his mind he ordered his fivt brigades
to form for the assault.
Across the way, Crittenden was inspecting his dispositions along
the west bank of Stones River, accompanied by his chief of artillery
Captain John Mendenhall, when he looked over the ford near the base of
the occupied hill beyond and saw the graybacks forming in heavy col-
umns along the ridge to the south, obviously preparing for a blow at
Beatty, who commanded not only Van Cleve's division but also the
two brigades of reinforcements which had joined him that morning. It
was now about 3.30; the sun was within an hour of the landline. Accord-
ing to Mendenhall, "The general asked me if I could not do something to
relieve Colonel Beatty with my guns." The Indiana-born West Pointer
could indeed, and he moved to do so promptly. Assembling within the
next half hour a total of 58 pieces of various calibers, he stationed 37
of these on the crest of a west-bank hill, cradled by a bend of the stream
and overlooking the opposite bank, and placed the other 21 along its
eastern base for flat-trajectory fire that would catch the rebel columns
end-on as they charged across the rolling slopes beyond the river. Then
he waited; but not for long.
The Rvt Confederate brigades, with a total effective strength
of 4500 men, started down off their sheltering ridge at 4 o'clock, moving
steadily across the valley which lay between them and the hill from
whose crest Beatty's cannoneers and riflemen soon took them under fire.
As at Baton Rouge five months ago, where they had fought in isolation
while the rest of Bragg's army was preparing to set out for their native
Bluegrass, the Kentuckians did not falter as they swung down the long
slope of the intervening valley, crossed its floor, and began to climb
the other side. Halfway up the face of the hill, taking heavier losses now
at closer range, they fired their first volleys and then, beginning to yell,
broke into a run for the crest. The bluecoats did not wait for them,
but whirled and fled from the threat of contact, and the attackers came
on after them, yelling now with shrill screams of triumph as they
topped the rise and pursued the defenders down the rearward slope.
[ioo] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
However, they could not close the gap created by the quick retreat,
and this gave Mendenhall the chance he had been waiting for all this
time, to shoot at his foes without injuring his friends. At the sig-
nal "Fire!" his 58 double-shotted guns began to roar in chorus, fling-
ing more than a hundred rounds a minute against the flank of the butter-
nut mass across the way. "Thinned, reeling, broken under that terrible
hail" — thus one reporter described the instantaneous effect — the
graybacks milled in confusion, scarcely knowing at first what had struck
them. When they saw what it was, they attempted to change front to the
left and move against the fuming hill beyond the ford; but to no avail.
"The very forest seemed to fall before our fire," one Federal observer
wrote — without exaggeration, for men in the gray ranks were actually
crushed under fallen limbs that were torn from the trees by exploding
shells when they tried to find shelter in a patch of woods — "and not
a Confederate reached the river." Shattered, they changed front again
to the left, of one accord, and ran for the ridge that had marked their
line of departure. A Union colonel, watching this sudden turn of events,
was the amused witness of a double, simultaneous retreat. "It was diffi-
cult to say which was running away the more rapidly," he later re-
ported, "the division of Van Cleve to the rear, or the enemy in the op-
posite direction."
Breckinridge watched his men come stumbling back through the
dusk that followed sunset of the brief winter day. They had been gone
just seventy minutes in all, and of their number 1700 had fallen: which
meant that better than one man out of every three who descended the
slope did not return unhurt. As their commander, who had protested
the slaughter in advance and done what he could to prevent it, watched
them close ranks to fill the gaps as they formed their line behind their
own ten guns on the ridge, his eyes filled with tears. "My poor orphans!
My poor orphans! " he exclaimed.
The lament for the fallen need not have been limited to the Con-
federate right, nor indeed to either side of the line of battle; for the over-
all Federal losses had been even heavier. According to final reports and
computations, in two days of conflict — the day-long struggle of the
31st and the sunset repulse on the 2d — only a dozen less than 25,000
casualties had been suffered by the two armies. (Which, incidentally, in-
dicated something of the fury of western fighting. With fewer than half
as many troops involved, the butcher bill at Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
was more than one-third greater than the one presented at Fredericks-
burg, Virginia, three weeks back.) The South lost 1294 killed, 7945
wounded, and 2500 captured or missing, a total of 11,739. The North
lost 1730 killed, 7802 wounded, and 3717 captured or missing, a total
of 13,249. The over-all total thus was 24,988: which was to say, and
The Longest Journey [ 101 ]
more could scarcely be said, that the battle had been bloodier than
Shiloh or Sharpsburg.
At any rate, though neither commander yet recognized the fact,
the carnage was over. Polk, who had learned of the sunset assault only
just before it was launched, when Bragg came to his headquarters for a
better view of the action across the river, had protested almost as
vehemently as Breckinridge had done, but with no more success;
Bragg's mind was quite made up. And now that the attack had met
with predicted disaster, the blue defenders returned to the abandoned
hill in greater strength than ever, reinforced by another whole division.
Tactically, all was as it had been before the assault was launched, only
more so; Polk would be less able to advance tomorrow than he had
been today. Whether the enemy was under a similar disadvantage he did
not know, but his two division commanders were not only doubtful
that such was the case, they were also doubtful that their troops were
in any fit condition to block the way: as was shown by a letter they
wrote, shortly after midnight, and sent through channels to Bragg. "We
deem it our duty to say to you frankly," Cheatham and Withers de-
clared, "that, in our judgment, this army should be promptly put in re-
treat. . . . We do fear great disaster from the condition of things now
existing, and think it should be averted if possible." Polk added his en-
dorsement to the unusual document: "I greatly fear the consequences
of another engagement at this place in the ensuing day. We could now,
perhaps, get off with some safety and some credit, if the affair is well
managed," and forwarded it to Bragg. Waked at 2 a.m., the grim-faced
commander sat up in bed and read the letter halfway through, then
stopped and told the aide who had disturbed his sleep: "Say to the gen-
eral we shall maintain our position at every hazard."
When he rose at daylight, however, he began to discover how
great that hazard was. Rain was falling steadily and the river was rising
fast, threatening to isolate the two wings of his army. Moreover, un-
like the previous ones, this morning's cavalry reports gave no hint of
signs in the night that the enemy was considering withdrawal, but rather
informed him that another fresh brigade of reinforcements had just ar-
rived on the Union right, accompanying a train of supplies from the
Tennessee capital. By now, too, his staff had found time to study the
papers captured when McCook's headquarters were overrun, which in-
dicated an effective strength of nearly 70,000 bluecoats to his front. This
gave Bragg pause, and having paused he wavered. At 10 o'clock that
morning he sent for Polk and Hardee, who found him in a different
frame of mind from the one he had shown eight hours ago, when he
was roused out of sleep to read the letter advising retreat. With the
enemy heavily reinforced, as he believed and later wrote in his report,
"Common prudence and the safety of my army, upon which even the
[io2] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
safety of our cause depended, left no doubt on my mind as to the neces-
sity of my withdrawal from so unequal a contest." The retrograde
movement got under way that night, January 3, and was conducted
with such skill that not even a rear-guard action was fought with the
unsuspecting Federals, who seemed no more anxious to pursue than
Bragg had been to stay. He himself went to Winchester, fifty miles
southeast, planning to establish a new line along Elk River. Polk was
instructed to fall back on Shelbyville, Hardee on Tullahoma, re-
spectively twenty-three and thirty-five miles from Murfreesboro, but
when the former reached his goal and reported that the bluecoats had
not ventured beyond Stones River, Bragg ordered Hardee to stop at
Wartrace, on line with Polk. Returning at once to establish head-
quarters at Tullahoma, on the railroad about midway between Nash-
ville and Chattanooga, he began to organize a new defensive position
along the Duck, whose rich valley offered much in the way of sub-
sistence and adequate camp sites, including level fields for the daily
hours of close-order drill in which he placed great store as a discipli-
narian.
His pride in his army and its conduct during the battle — which
was in a way a coda to the Kentucky excursion, launched soon after he
took command at Tupelo, Mississippi, back in June — was expressed in
his report, where he listed with satisfaction the capture of 6273
prisoners and enemy colors in abundance, along with 31 cannon and
6000 small arms, as well as "a large amount of other valuable property,
all of which was secured and appropriated to proper uses." Moreover, he
declared by way of final proof of moral superiority over his antag-
onist, "the army retired to its present position behind Duck River with-
out giving or receiving a shot." Within the ranks of that army, how-
ever, though the men agreed that they had won a victory, there were
fewer signs of elation. The retreat was made in wretched weather, and
as they plodded southward through the mud, alternately drenched with
rain and pelted with sleet, bent beneath the weight of their sodden packs,
it seemed to them that the Perryville technique — fight; win; fall back
— had been repeated. "What does he fight battles for?" they grumbled,
beginning to discern a discouraging pattern to their efforts under Bragg.
Similarly at home, as one civilian diarist recorded, "It was small surcease
to the sob of the widow and the moan of the orphan that 'the retreat to
Tullahoma was conducted in good order.' "
Rosecrans, on the other hand — who had not made a single
offensive move since the explosive attack on his right wing at dawn of
the 31st, who had allowed a foe he claimed was beaten to withdraw
from his immediate front without so much as a threat of molestation,
and who was so cautious in pursuit that his eventual movement to the
east bank of Stones River, from which he had withdrawn on the night
of January 3 lest the rising waters expose his troops to destruction in
The Longest Journey [ 103 ]
detail, amounted to practically no pursuit at all — was praised not only
by those below and above him in the army, but also by the public at
large, including the Ohio legislature, which tendered him before the
month was out a resolution of thanks "for the glorious victory resulting
in the capture of Murfreesboro and the defeat of the rebel forces at that
place." Cheered by his soldiers as he rode among them, he received
equally gratifying responses to the dispatches by which he announced
his victory to the authorities in Washington. "God bless you, and all
of you," the President replied, and the Secretary of War (who had
said of Rosecrans' appointment at the outset, "Well, you have made your
choice of idiots. Now you can await the news of a terrible disaster")
was quite expansive, wiring: "The country is filled with admiration of
the gallantry and heroic achievement of yourself and the officers and
troops under your command. . . . There is nothing you can ask within
my power to grant to yourself or your noble command that will not be
cheerfully given." Even Halleck, who had prodded and nudged him
for weeks beyond endurance, eventually joined the chorus of praise,
though not before he had waited a few days for verification in Confed-
erate newspapers smuggled across the border. "Rebel accounts fully
confirm your telegrams from the battlefield," he wired, and added:
"You and your brave army have won the gratitude of your country and
the admiration of the world. . . . All honor to the Army of the Cum-
berland — thanks to the living and tears for the lamented dead."
Bragg, he knew, was playing a cagey game at Tullahoma ("We
shall fight him again at every hazard if he advances, and harass him
daily if he does not," the terrible-tempered general was telling his su-
periors even now) but Rosecrans was firm in his intentions and had al-
ready reverted to the use of vigorous phrases he had been employing
two weeks back, on the eve of battle. "We shall press them as rapidly
as our means of traveling and subsistence will permit," he notified
Stanton on January 5. Next day, though he was still at Murfreesboro, he
boldly repeated words he had used at Nashville in mid-December: "I
now wish to press them to the wall."
When Davis returned to Richmond that same January 5, to be
met on the portico of the White House by his wife and their four
children — three sons and a daughter, stair-stepped at two-year inter-
vals so that their ages ranged from just past one to almost eight —
Mrs Davis, observing that her husband was near exhaustion, insisted that
he retire at once to rest from the exertions of his journey. Presently,
however, they heard the thump and blare of drums and horns and the
cheers of a crowd that had gathered in front of the house to welcome
him back with a serenade. Weary though he was, and despite his desire
to be alone with his family — "Every sound is the voice of my child
[104] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
and every child renews the memory of a loved one's appearance," he
had written home from Tennessee, "but none can equal their charms,
nor can any compare with my own long- worshipped Winnie" — he
felt that he could not ignore the shouts of the crowd or fail to acknowl-
edge the courtesy being tendered.
The cheers were redoubled as the big front door swung ajar
once more and the President came out onto the steps. Captain
J. B. Smith's Silver Band played "Listen to the Mocking Bird" and sev-
eral other airs which the crowd enjoyed while waiting for the speech
they had come to hear. Davis did not disappoint them. Carried forward
perhaps by a sort of verbal secondary inertia, he spoke as he had been
speaking now for more than three weeks, to similar crowds and with
similar words, in the course of his nearly three-thousand-mile trip to
"the further West" and back.
"I am happy to be welcomed on my return to the capital of the
Confederacy — the last hope, as I believe, for the perpetuation of that
system of government which our forefathers founded — the asylum of
the oppressed, and the home of true representative liberty." His voice,
as he thus began, showed the strain to which it had been exposed, but as
usual it gathered strength as he continued, reverting to the deeds of
olden days in the Old Dominion, where the earlier Revolution had been
proclaimed and, finally, won. Now once more, he told these latter-day
Virginians, "anticipating the overthrow of that government which you
had inherited, you assumed to yourselves the right, as your fathers had
done before you, to declare yourself independent, and nobly have you
advocated the assertion which you have made. Here, upon your soil,
some of the fiercest battles of the Revolution were fought, and upon
your soil it closed by the surrender of Cornwallis. Here again are men of
every state; here they have congregated, linked in the defense of a most
sacred cause. They have battled, they have bled upon your soil, and it
is now consecrated by blood which cries for vengeance against the in-
sensate foe of religion as well as of humanity, of the altar as well as of
the hearthstone." Thus he repeated the bitterness he had voiced in his
home state, ten days ago. Nor, with first-hand accounts of the sack of
Fredericksburg now added to the list of northern depredations — not the
least of them being the recently issued Emancipation Proclamation,
which, as he saw it, incited the slaves to the murder of their masters —
had that reaction been tempered by second thought. Rather, the bitter-
ness had increased: as he now showed. "It is true," he told his listeners,
"you have a cause which binds you together more firmly than your
fathers were. They fought to be free from the usurpations of the British
crown, but they fought against a manly foe. You fight against the off-
scourings of the earth."
Applauded, he passed on to a brief review of recent Confederate
The Longest Journey [ 105 ]
successes in the field, which he predicted would bring discord to north-
ern councils, and then returned to his condemnation, not only of the
conduct of the Federal armies of invasion, but also of the men who had
sent them South. "Every crime which could characterize the course of
demons has marked the course of the invader . . . from the burning of
defenseless towns to the stealing of silver forks and spoons." In this last
he had particular reference to Ben Butler, known as "Beast" Butler and
"Spoons" Butler as a result of his alleged brutality and deftness in the
exercise of his authority in command of the occupation of New Orleans,
and Davis made the charge explicit, asserting that the Massachusetts gen-
eral had "exerted himself to earn the excoriations of the civilized world,
and now returns [to Washington] with his dishonors thick upon him
to receive the plaudits of the only people on earth who do not blush to
think he wears the human form. . . . They have come to disturb your
social organization on the plea that it is a military necessity. For what are
they waging war? They say to preserve the Union. Can they preserve
the Union by destroying the social existence of a portion of the South?
Do they hope to reconstruct the Union by striking at everything which
is dear to man? — by showing themselves so utterly disgraced that if the
question was proposed to you whether you would combine with hyenas
or Yankees, I trust every Virginian would say: 'Give me the hyenas.' '
"Good! Good!" his listeners cried, and there was laughter. They
wanted more along these lines.
But Davis spoke calmly now, as if to refute the charge made by
his critics that he was cold in his attitude toward the people, uncon-
cerned for their welfare, and anxious to avoid commingling with them
— as if, indeed, he had brought back East from his journey West an in-
creased awareness of the warmth and strength proceeding from contact
with those who looked to him for leadership not only as their President
but also as a man. "My friends, constant labor in the duties of office,
borne down by care, and with an anxiety which has left me scarcely a
moment for repose, I have had but little opportunity for social inter-
course among you. I thank you for this greeting, and hope the time may
come soon when you and I alike, relieved of the anxieties of the hour,
may have more of social intercourse than has heretofore existed."
Flushed with confidence as a result of the victories won by the nation's
armies in the course of his trip, he added: "If the war continues we shall
only grow stronger and stronger as each year rolls on. Compare our
condition today with that which existed one year ago. See the increasing
power of the enemy, but mark that our own has been proportionately
greater, until we see in the future nothing to disturb the prospect of
the independence for which we are struggling. One year ago, many were
depressed and some were despondent. Now deep resolve is seen in every
eye; an unconquerable spirit nerves every arm. And gentle woman, too;
[ io6 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
who can estimate the value of her services in this struggle? . . . With
such noble women at home, and such heroic soldiers in the field, we are
invincible."
He waited for the applause to die away, and then concluded his
remarks, once more on a personal note. "I thank you, my friends, for the
kind salutation tonight; it is an indication that at some future time we
shall be better acquainted. I trust we shall all live to enjoy some of the
fruits of the struggle in which we are engaged. My prayers are for
your individual and collective welfare. May God prosper our cause, and
may we live to give to our children untarnished the rich inheritance
which our fathers gave us. Good night! "
CHAPTER
x 2 x
Unhappy New Year
* x A
NEW YEAR'S 1863 WAS FOR ABRAHAM LINCOLN
perhaps the single busiest day of his whole presidential life, and it came
moreover at dead center of what was perhaps his period of deepest gloom
and perplexity of spirit. Not only was there political division within his
party, and even within his own official family, but with the possible ex-
ception of Rosecrans, whose battle was in mid-career and appeared
worse than doubtful, all his hand-picked commanders had failed him ut-
terly, through enemy action or their own inaction, in his hopes for a mul-
tifaceted early- winter triumph in which he himself had assigned them the
parts they were to play in putting a quick end to rebellion. One by one,
sometimes two by two, they had failed him. Burnside and his fellow gen-
erals on the Rappahannock, having blundered into defeat at Fredericks-
burg, were engaged in a frenzy of backbiting such as not even the highly
contentious Army of the Potomac had ever known before. Grant, ac-
cording to the New York Times, remained "stuck in the mud of north-
ern Mississippi, his army of no use to him or anybody else.' , Banks,
caught in a toil of imported New Orleans cotton speculators, was sty-
mied by a previously unsuspected fort on the Mississippi, two hundred
and fifty miles downstream from his assigned objective. And McClernand,
from whom the Commander in Chief had perhaps expected most, was ap-
parently the worst off of all. He not only had done nothing with his
army; the last Lincoln had heard from him, he could not even find it.
Nor had these and other failures of omission and commission gone
unnoticed by the country at large, the voters and investors on whose
will and trust the prosecution of the war depended. The Democrats, still
on the outside looking in, but with substantial gains in the fall elections to
sharpen their appetite for more, had seen to that: especially Ohio Repre-
sentative Clement L. Vallandigham, who was savagely pointing out,
from the vantage point of his seat in Congress, the administration's er-
rors. "Money you have expended without limit," he told Republicans in
[io8] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
the House, "and blood poured out like water. Defeat, debt, taxation, and
sepulchers — these are your only trophies." Others, less violent but no
less earnest, including his disaffected former allies, were accusing the
President in a similar vein; so that now, perhaps, with his own critics cry-
ing out against him, he could feel more sympathy for James K. Polk
than he had felt when he spoke against him in Congress, fifteen years ago
this month, in the midst of another war. "I more than suspect already,"
the youthful Lincoln had declared from a seat in the rear of the House,
"that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood
of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him; that
originally having some strong motive ... to involve the two countries in
a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the
exceeding brightness of military glory ... he plunged into it and has
swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation ... he now finds him-
self he knows not where. . . . His mind, tasked beyond its power, is run-
ning hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface,
finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease. . . . He is a
bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he
may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more
painful than all his mental perplexity! "
The words rebounded from the target, boomeranged down the
years, and came back in other forms to strike the sender. Orestes Brown-
son, the prominent Boston author and former transcendentalist, wrote of
Lincoln: "His soul seems made of leather, and incapable of any grand or
noble emotion. Compared with the mass of men, he is a line of flat prose
in a beautiful and spirited lyric. He lowers, he never elevates you. You
leave his presence with your enthusiasm dampened, your better feelings
crushed, and your hopes cast to the winds. You ask not, can this man
carry the nation through its terrible struggles? but can the nation carry
this man through them, and not perish in the attempt? " Brownson was of
no uncertain mind where Lincoln was concerned. "He is thickheaded; he
is ignorant; he is tricky, somewhat astute, in a small way, and obstinate
as a mule. . . . He is wrong-headed, the attorney not the lawyer, the petty
politician not the statesman, and, in my belief, ill-deserving of the soubri-
quet of Honest. I am out of all patience with him," he added, rather anti-
climactically, and inquired: "Is there no way of inducing him to resign,
and allow Mr Hamlin to take his place?" Senator William Pitt Fessenden,
a Maine Republican high in the party's councils, replied in somewhat the
same vein when told that he should be a member of the cabinet in order
to be at Lincoln's elbow and give the nation the full benefit of his advice.
"No friend of mine should ever wish to see me there," he answered.
"You cannot change the President's character or conduct. He remained
long enough in Springfield, surrounded by toadies and office-seekers, to
persuade himself that he was specially chosen by the Almighty for this
Unhappy New Year [ 109 ]
crisis, and well chosen. This conceit has never yet been beaten out of him,
and until it is, no human wisdom can be of much avail. I see nothing for
it but to let the ship of state drift along, hoping that the current of pub-
lic opinion may bring it safely into port." Similarly, a Boston philanthro-
pist, railroad magnate J. M. Forbes, convinced that Lincoln was badly off
the track, was asking: "Can nothing be done to reach the President's ear
and heart? I hear he is susceptible to religious impressions; shall we
send our eloquent divines to talk to him, or shall we send on a deputation
of mothers and wives, or can we, the conservators of liberty, who have
elected him, combine with Congress in beseeching him to save the coun-
try?"
In point of fact, one such group of "eloquent divines" as Forbes
suggested did come to call on Lincoln at this time, protesting with con-
siderable heat the lack of progress in the war; but he gave them little
satisfaction beyond a brief, short-tempered lecture comparing the admin-
istration's predicament to that of a tightrope walker in mid-act. "Gentle-
men," he told them, "suppose all the property you were worth was in
gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niag-
ara River. Would you shake the cable or keep shouting out to him,
'Blondin, stand up a little straighter!' 'Blondin, stoop a little more!' 'Go a
little faster'; 'Lean a little more to the north'; 'Lean a little more to the
south'? No. You would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and
keep your hands off until he was safe over. The government is carrying
an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing
the very best they can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get
you safe across." The visit, he said afterwards, made him "a little shy of
preachers" for a time. "But the latchstring is out," he added, "and they
have the right to come here and preach to me if they will go about it
with some gentleness and moderation."
Gentleness and moderation were easier to prescribe than they
were to practice. An infinitely patient man, he was beginning to lose pa-
tience: with the result that some who formerly had complained that he
lacked firmness were now protesting that he had assumed the preroga-
tives of a dictator, spurning their counsels and high-handedly overruling
their objections. It was true in some respects. His accustomed tact some-
times failed him under pressure nowadays, and he gave short answers,
though rarely without the saving grace of humor, the velvet glove that
softened the clutch of the iron hand. This was evident, for example, in a
clash with Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase about this time. An
economist came to Lincoln with a plan for issuing greenbacks. Lincoln
heard him out, liked the notion, but told him: "You must go to Chase. He
is running that end of the machine." The man left, then presently re-
turned, saying that the Secretary had dismissed him with the objection
that the proposal was unconstitutional. Lincoln grimaced. "Go back to
[no] THE CIVIL WAR^1862
Chase," he said, "and tell him not to bother himself about the Constitu-
tion. Say that I have that sacred instrument here at the White House, and
am guarding it with great care."
Such brusque, not to say cavalier, treatment of his highly re-
spected Treasury chief was prologue to an even rougher handling of
that dignitary in mid-December, when he tripped him neatly from behind
as he tried a sprint up several rungs of the political ladder. This was a
time of crisis and division, in the cabinet as in the nation at large. One
member, Secretary of the Interior Caleb Blood Smith, who had received
his appointment as the result of a convention bargain, was leaving to ac-
cept a judgeship Lincoln had offered him in his native Indiana; his post
would go to John Palmer Usher, another Hoosier, at present the Assist-
ant Secretary. The other six members were split on the question of
whether to admit West Virginia as a state under an act just passed by
Congress, divorcing Virginia's northwest counties from the Old Domin-
ion and validating the rump government set up in Charleston during the
Sumter furor. Three cabinet officers — Chase, Stanton, and Secretary of
State William H. Seward — wanted Lincoln to sign the bill, converting
slave soil into free soil by the stroke of a pen, and incidentally adding
good Republican votes on whatever questions Congress might decide
needed settling in the future; while three others — Secretary of the Navy
Gideon Welles, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Postmaster Gen-
eral Montgomery Blair — recommended that he veto it, on grounds that
the act was in a sense a ratification of secession. Though he could not
reconcile their views, Lincoln quickly solved the problem to his own ap-
proximate satisfaction. "The division of a state is dreaded as a precedent,"
he reasoned. "But a measure made expedient by a war is no precedent for
times of peace. It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession,
and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that
name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Con-
stitution and secession in favor of the Constitution." On the last day of
the year, though he did so with a wry face, he signed the. bill. West
Virginia would become in June a full-fledged state of the Union, the
thirty-fifth, not discounting the eleven who had no representation in
Congress pending the settlement of their claim to have abolished their
old ties.
Seward and Chase had voted together on the issue, but that was
rare. In general they were diametrically opposed, as they had been in the
old days when they were rivals for the office which, by a fluke, had gone
to Lincoln. Chase, who was jealous of Seward's position as the Presi-
dent's chief adviser, wanted not only the seat closest to the one at the head
of the table, but also, as time would show, the principal seat itself. In this
connection, noting the way the wind blew, he had aligned himself with
the radicals in Congress, the so-called Jacobins who had come to see
Seward as the stumbling block in the way of adoption of their notions as
Unhappy New Year [ m ]
to how the war should be fought and the country run, just as Chase had
come to see him as a hurdle that would have to be removed or overleaped
if he was to fulfill his own ambitions. By way of undoing their common
adversary, he fanned the flames of the radicals' hatred by reporting
Seward's every private opposition to their aims (the New Yorker, for
example, had delayed the promulgation of the Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation by advising Lincoln to wait for a more propitious season
before releasing it to the world; than which, indeed, there could be no
crime greater in radical eyes) as well as by giving them a blow-by-blow
account of every cabinet crisis, omitting nothing that served to thicken
the atmosphere of discord and indecision. So it was that at last, on De-
cember 17 — four days after the Fredericksburg fiasco, which seemed to
them to prove emphatically that the prosecution of the war was in quite
the wrong hands — all but one of the thirty-two Republican senators
met in secret caucus on Capitol Hill and passed unanimously the follow-
ing resolution, by way of advice to the leader of their party: "Resolved,
that . . . the public confidence in the present administration would be in-
creased by a change in and partial reconstruction of the cabinet." It was
Seward they were after, Seward alone, and lest there be any doubt on
that score a committee of nine was appointed to present the resolution
to Lincoln and explain to him just what it was they meant.
The one abstaining senator was New York's Preston King, who
went at once to Seward and warned his former senatorial colleague that
the Jacobins, "thirsty for a victim" in the wake of recent misfortunes,
had selected his neck for the ax. Seward reacted fast when he learned
thus of the resolution about to be presented. "They may do as they please
about me," he said, "but they shall not put the President in a false position
on my account." Accordingly he took a sheet of paper, and having
scrawled a few words across it — "Sir, I hereby resign from the office of
Secretary of State, and beg that my resignation be accepted immediately"
— sent it forthwith to the White House. Lincoln was shocked. "What
does this mean?" he asked as he put on his hat and set out for Seward's
house, which was just across the street. Seward explained what had hap-
pened, along with what was about to happen, and added that he person-
ally would be glad to get from under the burden of official duties and
political harassment. "Ah yes, Governor," Lincoln said, shaking his head.
"That will do very well for you, but I am like the starling in Sterne's
story. 'I can't get out.' " He pocketed the resignation and went sadly
back across the White House lawn.
At any rate, next morning when the committee spokesman called,
he knew what to expect. He set the time for the presentation at 7 o'clock
that evening; he would receive the full committee then. This was a
crisis, not only for Lincoln but also for the nation, and he knew it. "If I
had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward," he said later, "the thing
would have all slumped over one way, and we should have been left
[ ii2 ] THE CIVIL WAR^-1862
with a scant handful of supporters/' Knowing what had to be done was
a quite different thing, however, from knowing how to do it. Ben Wade
of Ohio, George W. Julian of Indiana, Zachariah Chandler of Michigan:
these and others like them were men of power and savage purpose, ac-
complished haters who would be merciless in revenging even an imagined
slight, let alone an outright rebuff. Whatever Lincoln did had better be
done without incurring their personal enmity. Besides, he not only had
to avoid their anger; he also needed their support. What he required just
now was someone to draw their wrath, someone to serve him much as a
billygoat serves the farmer who places him in a barnlot to draw fleas. By
evening, not without a certain sense of political and even poetical justice,
he had chosen the someone. All that remained was to make him serve, and
that could be done quite simply by branding him, in the eyes of all, for
what he was.
The nine committeemen were prompt; Lincoln received them in
his office. By way of a beginning, seventy-one-year-old Jacob Collamer
of Vermont, who had been elected spokesman, read the resolution and
followed it with a paper which summed up the conclusions reached in
caucus the day before. The war should be prosecuted vigorously; cabinet
members should be "cordial, resolute, unwavering" in their devotion to
the principles of the Republican majority; the cabinet itself, once it had
been stripped and rebuilt so as to contain only such stalwarts, should
have a larger voice in the running of the government. Wade rose next, a
vigorous man with "burning" eyes and bulldog flews, protesting hotly
that the President had "placed the direction of our military affairs in the
hands of bitter and malignant Democrats." He spoke at length, going
somewhat afield from the central issue, and was followed by Fessenden,
who agreed that the war was "not sufficiently in the hands of its friends,"
then brought the discussion back on target by charging specifically "that
the Secretary of State [is] not in accord with the majority of the cabinet
and [has] exerted an injurious influence upon the conduct of the war."
Others had their say along these lines, also at considerable length, but
Lincoln kept his temper and said little. After three hours of listening,
however, he suggested that the meeting adjourn until the following
night. The senators agreed. Alone at last, he saw clearly, as he presently
remarked, that if he let these men have their way "the whole govern-
ment must cave in; it could not stand, could not hold water; the bottom
would be out."
He knew what to do and, by now, how to do it; but he was sad-
dened. "What do those men want?" he asked his friend Senator Orville
Browning of Illinois next day. "I hardly know, Mr President," Browning
replied, "but they are exceedingly violent " Lincoln knew well
enough what they wanted, though, and he said so: "They wish to get rid
of me — and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them." Browning
protested, but Lincoln shook his head. "We are now on the brink of de-
Unhappy New Year [113]
struction," he said. "It appears to me the Almighty is against us, and I
can hardly see a ray of hope." Again Browning protested. Though he
was not a member of the committee, he had attended the caucus and had
voted for the resolution: which, he explained defensively, "was the gen-
tlest thing that could be done. We had to do that, or worse." The trouble
he said was Seward. While he personally had a high regard for the Secre-
tary, others were saying that the New Yorker had the President under
his thumb. "Why should men believe a lie," Lincoln broke in, "an absurd
lie, that could not impose on a child, and cling to it and repeat it in defi-
ance of all evidences to the contrary?" His sadness deepened. "The com-
mittee is to be up to see me at 7 o'clock. Since I heard last night of the
proceedings of the caucus I have been more distressed than by any event
of my life."
If this was so, it did not show in his manner when he welcomed
the committeemen that evening for a second round of grievance presenta-
tions. Before the discussion got under way, however, he announced to
the assembled senators that he had thought it fitting to have the cabinet
officers — minus Seward, of course, since even aside from the fact that
his resignation was pending, that would have been too indelicate — pres-
ent to answer the charge that there was discord among them and that the
President seldom followed or even asked for their advice. Whereupon
the door opened and the six gentlemen in question filed into the room.
Lincoln had invited them at the cabinet meeting that morning, after tell-
ing them of the matter afoot and of Seward's submission of his resigna-
tion. Mostly they had welcomed the chance to confront their accusers,
although two of their number — Chase in particular — had protested
that they "knew of no good that could come of an interview." In the
end, however, the two — the other was Bates — had been obliged to go
along with the majority. Now here they were, face to face with critics
whose accusations were based, at least in part, on information supplied in
private by Chase in order to curry favor with them. Already he was
squirming, as if the fleas had jumped at the sight of his large, handsome
person: but the worst was still to come.
If Chase and some of the senators were embarrassed by the con-
frontation, Lincoln certainly was not. He began the proceedings by
reading aloud yesterday's bill of particulars, admitting as he went along
that he had not consulted the cabinet on all affairs of state or war, and
that he had not always followed their advice, even when he had sought
it; but in the main, he said, he had valued and used their abilities, individ-
ually and collectively. As for discord, he did not think it reasonable to
expect seven such independent-minded men to agree on every issue that
came before them; but here again, he said, he thought they worked to-
gether mainly as a unit, and certainly he himself had no complaint. He
paused, then turned to the six cabinet members present, beginning to poll
them one by one. Did they or did they not agree with his statement of
[ 114] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
the case? They did; or so they said, one by one; until he came to Chase.
Chase, as it turned out, also agreed, though not without considerable
hemming and hawing by way of preamble. He would never have come
to the meeting, he said, if he had known he was "to be arraigned." He
seemed angry. He seemed to feel that he was being "put upon" — as in-
deed he was. In the end, with Wade and the others watching balefully,
he admitted that matters of prime importance had usually come before
the cabinet, though perhaps "not so fully as might be desired," and that
there had been "no want of unity in the cabinet, but a general acquies-
cence in public measures." Thus he wound up, and the Jacobins watched
him cold-eyed, contrasting what he said now, in the presence of Lincoln
and his colleagues, with what he had said in private. The President did
not prolong his suffering. Having more or less settled these two points
of contention, he shifted the talk to the question of Seward, defending
his chief minister against yesterday's charges, and then began to poll the
committeemen on their views. At that point Fessenden recoiled. "I do
not think it proper," he said, "to discuss the merits or demerits of a mem-
ber of the cabinet in the presence of his associates." Chase was quick to
agree. "I think the members of the cabinet should withdraw," he said. In
solemn procession they did so, some amused, some disgruntled, and one,
at least, discredited in the eyes of men whose favor he had sought.
Like Simon Cameron a year ago, the Treasury chief had learned
the hard way what it meant to tangle with Lincoln. Cameron was in Rus-
sia now, a victim of political decapitation, and Chase was determined to
avoid such punishment. He would forestall the headsman by submitting,
however regretfully, his resignation. This was exactly what Lincoln
wanted: as was shown next morning, December 20, when he came into
his office and found Chase, Welles, and Stanton grouped around the fire.
Chase began to complain of yesterday's damage to his dignity. It had af-
fected him most painfully, he said, for it seemed to indicate a lack of con-
fidence. In fact — he hesitated — he had written out his resignation at
home the night before. . . . Lincoln's reaction to this was not at all what
the Secretary had expected. His expression was one of downright joy.
"Where is it?" he said eagerly.
"I brought it with me," Chase replied, taking a letter from his
inside coat pocket.
"Let me have it," Lincoln said, and he put out a long arm.
Chase drew back, but not in time. Lincoln already had hold of the
paper, and the Secretary suffered the added shock of having it snatched
from his grasp. Reading it quickly through, Lincoln laughed; "a trium-
phal laugh," Welles called it in his diary. "This cuts the Gordian knot,"
he exclaimed. "I can dispose of this subject now without difficulty. I see
my way clear." Stanton, who had been guilty of some of the same back-
stairs maneuvers — though he did not know whether the President sus-
pected him, or what he might do if he did — remarked stiffly that he was
Unhappy Neiv Year [115]
prepared to tender his resignation, too. But Lincoln already had what he
had been working toward. "You may go to your department," he said
gaily. "I don't want yours. This" — he held up Chase's letter — "is all I
want; this relieves me; the case is clear; the trouble is ended. I will detain
neither of you longer."
His satisfaction was obvious, amounting to delight. What he had
had in mind all along, and had achieved through skillful handling, was a
balance: Chase's resignation against Seward's, which the Jacobins were
still urging him to accept. Now, however, with Chase's inseparably in-
cluded — "If one goes, the other must," he presently notified the sena-
tors; "they must hunt in couples" — they would be much less insistent;
for, whatever their disgust with the Treasury chief's performance the
day before, they still believed that he could be useful to them within the
administration's private councils. Lincoln himself described the situation
with a metaphor out of his boyhood in Kentucky, where he had seen
farmers riding to market with a brace of pumpkins lodged snugly in a
bag, one at each end in order to make a balanced load across the horse's
withers. "Now I can ride," he said. "I have got a pumpkin in each end
of my bag." Accordingly, he sent polite, identical notes to the two minis-
ters, declining to accept their resignations and requesting them to con-
tinue as members of his official family. Seward, who had watched the
maneuvers with amusement from a seat behind the scene, agreed at once;
but Chase held off, still suffering from the fleabites, which were no less
painful for being figurative. "I will sleep on it," he said. However, after
a day of meditation and prayer — for it was a Sunday and he was in-
tensely religious, spending a good part of each Sabbath on his knees — he
agreed to remain at his post, as Lincoln had confidently expected.
Here was a case of double salvation, in more ways than one.
Within the confines of his office in the White House, Lincoln had planned
and fought a three-day battle as important to the welfare of the nation,
and the progress of the war through united effort, as many that raged in
the open field with booming guns and casualties by the thousands. In
addition to retaining the services of Seward and Chase, both excellent
men at their respective posts, he had managed to turn aside the wrath of
the Jacobins without increasing their bitterness toward himself or incur-
ring their open hatred, which might well have been fatal. Nor was that
all. Paradoxically, because of the way he had gone about it, in avoiding
the disruption of his cabinet he had achieved within it a closer harmony
than had obtained before. This was partly because of the increased re-
spect his actions earned him, but it was also because of the effect the inci-
dent had on the two ministers most intimately concerned. For all his
loyalty to Lincoln through the storm, Seward had not previously aban-
doned the notion that he was the man directly in line for his job. Now,
though, with all but one of the senators in his own party having ex-
pressed a desire to see him removed from any connection with the execu-
[n6] THE CIVIL WAR»"1862
tive branch of the government, the presidential itch was cured. From
that hour, his devotion to his duties was single-minded and his loyalty
acquired an added zeal. So much could hardly be said for Chase, exactly,
but he too had been sobered, and his ambition taken down a notch, by
the cold-eyed looks the radical leaders had given him while he squirmed.
It was no wonder, then, that Lincoln indulged in self-congratulation
when he reviewed the three-day maneuver. "I do not see how I could
have done better," he remarked.
Few would disagree with this assessment, even among the frock-
coated politicians he had bested, whether senators or members of his cabi-
net. In point of fact, whatever shocks they had suffered along the way,
there should have been little surprise at the outcome; for the matter had
been essentially political, and politics (or statesmanship, if you will,
which he once defined as the art of getting the best from men who all
too often were intent on giving nothing better than their worst) was a
science he had mastered some time back. The military art was something
else. Whether Lincoln would ever do as well as Commander in Chief of
the nation's armies as he had done as its Chief Executive was more than
doubtful — particularly in the light of current testimony as to the condi-
tion of the largest of those armies, still on the near bank of the Rappahan-
nock attempting to recover from the shock of its mid-December blood
bath.
"Exhaustion steals over the country. Confidence and hope are
dying," the Quartermaster General wrote privately this week to its com-
mander. "The slumber of the army since [the attack at Fredericksburg]
is eating into the vitals of the nation. As day after day has gone, my
heart has sunk and I see greater peril to our nationality in the present con-
dition of affairs than I have seen at any time during the struggle." Com-
plaints were heard from below as well as above, and though these were
not addressed to Burnside personally, accusing fingers were leveled in his
direction and even higher. "Our poppycorn generals kill men as Herod
killed the innocents," a Massachusetts private declared, and a Wisconsin
major called this winter "the Valley Forge of the war." A bitterness was
spreading through the ranks. "Alas my poor country! " a New York cor-
poral wrote home. "It has strong limbs to march and meet the foe, stout
arms to strike heavy blows, brave hearts to dare. But the brains, the
brains — have we no brains to use the arms and limbs and eager hearts
with cunning? Perhaps Old Abe has some funny story to tell, appropriate
to the occasion Mother, do not wonder that my loyalty is growing
weak," he added. "I am sick and tired of disaster and the fools that bring
disaster upon us."
There was a snatch of doggerel, sung to the tune of the old sea
chanty "Johnny, Fill up the Bowl," making the rounds:
Unhappy New Year [117]
Abram Lincoln, what yer ''bout?
Hurrah! Hurrah!
Stop this war. It's all played out.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
Abram Lincoln, what yer 'bout?
Stop this war. It's all played out.
We'll all drink stone blind:
Johnny, fill up the bowl!
Veterans in the Army of the Potomac took up the refrain, "all played
out," and made it their own. Once they had pretended cynicism as a
cover for their greenness and their fears, but now they felt they had
earned it and they found the phrase descriptive of their outlook through
this season of discontent. "The phrensy of our soldiers rushing to glory
or death has, as our boys amusingly affirm, been played out" a regimen-
tal chaplain wrote. "Our battle-worn veterans go into danger when or-
dered, remain as a stern duty so long as directed, and leave as soon as
honor and duty allow." Case-hardened by their recent experience over
the river, particularly in the repeated fruitless assaults on the stone wall
at the base of Marye's Heights, they had no use for heroic postures or
pretensions nowadays. When they saw magazine illustrations showing
mounted officers with drawn sabers leading smartly aligned columns of
troops unflinchingly through shellbursts, they snickered and jeered and
whooped their motto: "All played out!"
Lincoln already knew something of this, but he learned a good
deal more on December 29 when two disgruntled brigadiers hurried
from Falmouth to Washington on short-term passes, intending to warn
their congressmen of what they believed was imminent disaster. Burnside
was planning to recross the Rappahannock any day now, having issued
three days' cooked rations the day after Christmas, along with orders for
the troops to be held in readiness to move on twelve hours' notice. What
alarmed the two brigadiers — John Newton and John Cochrane, the lat-
ter a former Republican congressman himself — was that the army,
which they were convinced was in a condition of near-mutiny, would
come apart at the seams if it was called upon to repeat this soon the
tragic performance it had staged two weeks ago in the same arena, and
therefore they had come to warn the influential Bay State senator Henry
Wilson, chairman of the Senate A4ilitary Committee, in hopes that he
could get the movement stopped. In the intensity of their concern, as
they discovered when they reached the capital, they had failed to take
into account the fact that Congress was in recess over the holidays; Wil-
son had gone home. Undeterred, they went to see the Secretary of State,
a former political associate of Cochrane's. When Seward heard their bur-
den of woes he took them straight to the President, to whom — though
they were somewhat daunted now, never having intended to climb this
[n8] THE CIVIL WAR»*1862
high up the chain of command — they repeated, along with hasty assur-
ances that the basis for their admittedly irregular visit was patriotism, not
hope for advancement, their conviction that if the Army of the Potomac
was committed to battle in its present discouraged state it would be ut-
terly destroyed. Not only would it be unable to hold the line of the Rap-
pahannock; it would not even be able to hold the line of the river from
which it took its name. Lincoln, who had known nothing of the pending
movement, and scarcely more of the extent of the demoralization Coch-
rane and Newton claimed was rampant, was infected with their fears and
got off a wire to Burnside without delay: "I have good reason for saying
that you must not make a general movement without first letting me
know of it."
Burnside, though his infantry had already been alerted for a
downstream crossing while his cavalry was in motion for a feint up-
stream — "a risky expedition but a buster," one trooper called the plan —
promptly complied with the President's telegram by canceling the move-
ment, but he was angered and saddened by the obvious lack of confi-
dence on the part of his superiors. The army, too — whatever its glad-
ness over the postponement of another blood bath — was aggrieved as it
filed back into its camps, feeling mistrusted and mistrustful. "Such checks
destroy the enthusiasm of any army," the same trooper dolefully pro-
tested.
Yet it was at this point, near the apparent nadir of its self-confi-
dence and pride, with disaffection evident in all of its components, from
the commander down to the youngest drummer boy, that the one truly
imperishable quality of this army first began to be discerned, like a gleam
that only shone in darkness. If men could survive the unprofitable
slaughter of Fredericksburg — the patent bungling, the horror piled on
pointless horror, and the disgust that came with the conclusion that their
comrades had died less by way of proving their love for their country
than by way of proving the ineptness of their leaders — it might well be
that they could survive almost anything. There were those who saw this.
There were those who, unlike Newton and Cochrane, did not mistake
the vociferous reaction for near-mutiny, who knew that griping was not
only the time-honored prerogative of the American soldier, from Valley
Forge on down, but was also, in its way, a proof of his basic toughness
and resilience. "The more I saw of the Army of the Potomac," one corre-
spondent wrote from the camps around Falmouth, "the more I wondered
at its invincible spirit, which no disaster seemed able to destroy." A Har-
per's Weekly editor perhaps overstated the case — "All played out!" the
soldiers who read it doubtless jeered — but was also thinking along these
lines in an issue that came out about this time: "Like our forefathers the
English, who always began their wars by getting soundly thrashed by
their enemies, and only commenced to achieve success when it was
Unhappy Ne<w Year [ 119 ]
thought they were exhausted, we are warming to the work with each
mishap."
Lincoln thought so, too, what time he managed to shake off the
deep melancholy that was so much a part of his complex nature. He
probed and, probing, he considered what emerged. As of the first day of
the year which was opening so inauspiciously, the Union had 918,211
soldiers under arms, whereas the Confederacy had 446,622, or a good
deal less than half as many. At several critical points along the thousand-
mile line of division the odds were even longer — out in Middle Tennes-
see, for instance, or down along the Rappahannock — and the troubled
Commander in Chief found solace in brooding on the figures, even those
that reached him from the field of Fredericksburg. "We lost fifty percent
more men than did the enemy," a member of the White House staff re-
marked after hearing his chief discuss the outcome of the fighting there,
"and yet there is sense in the awful arithmetic propounded by Mr Lin-
coln. He says that if the same battle were to be fought over again, every
day, through a week of days, with the same relative results, the army
under Lee would be wiped out to the last man, [while] the Army of the
Potomac would still be a mighty host. The war would be over, the Con-
federacy gone." There was error here. Northern losses in the battle had
exceeded southern losses, not by fifty, but by considerably better than
one hundred percent. And yet there was validity in Lincoln's premise as
to the end result, and especially was there validity in the conclusion the
staff man heard him draw: "No general yet found can face the arithme-
tic, but the end of the war will be at hand when he shall be discovered."
Scott and McDowell, Pope and McClellan, and now Burnside:
none of these was the killer he was seeking. Already he saw that this
search was perhaps after all the major problem. All else — while, like
Blondin, Lincoln threaded his way, burdened by untold treasures — was,
in a sense, a biding of time until the unknown killer could be found.
Somewhere he existed, and somewhere he would find him, this unidenti-
fied general who could face the grim arithmetic being scrawled in blood
across these critical, tragic pages of the nation's history.
These and other matters were much on the President's mind when
he woke on January 1. After an early-morning conference with Burn-
side, who had come up from Falmouth to ask in person just what the
Commander in Chief's "good reason" had been for not allowing him to
handle his own army as he saw fit, Lincoln spent the usual half hour with
his barber, then got into his best clothes and went downstairs for the ac-
customed New Year's White House reception. For three hours, begin-
ning at 1 1 o'clock, it was "How do you do?" "Thank you." "Glad to see
you." "How do you do?" as the invited guests — high government offi-
[izo] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
cials, members of the diplomatic corps, and other important dignitaries,
foreign and domestic — having threaded their way through the crowd
of uninvited onlookers collected on the lawn, alighted from their car-
riages, came into the parlor, and filed past Lincoln for handshakes and
refreshments. At i o'clock the long ordeal was over; he went back up-
stairs to his office for the day's — or, some would say, the century's —
most important business, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Throughout the ninety-nine days since September 23, when the
preliminary announcement of intention had been made, there had been
much speculation as to whether he would issue or withdraw the final
proclamation. Some were for it, some against. His friend Browning, for
example, reflecting the view of constituents in the President's home state,
thought it "fraught with evil, and evil only." The senator believed that
the "useless and mischievous" document would serve "to unite and exas-
perate" the South, and to "divide and distract us in the North." Lincoln
himself, if only by his neglect of the subject while the hundred days
ticked off, had seemed to see the point of this objection. In his December
message to Congress he had barely mentioned the projected edict, but had
reverted instead to his original plan for compensated emancipation, a
quite different thing indeed. Alarmed by this apparent failure of nerve,
Abolitionists looked to their hero Senator Charles Sumner of Massachu-
setts, who went to Lincoln three days after Christmas for a straight talk
on the matter. He found him hard at work on the final draft of the
proclamation, writing it out in longhand. "I know very well that the
name connected with this document will never be forgotten," Lincoln
said, by way of explanation for his pains, and Sumner returned to his own
desk to reassure a qualmish friend in Boston: "The President says he
would not stop the Proclamation if he could, and he could not if he
would. ...Hallelujah!"
So it was. Seward brought the official copy over from the State
Department, where a skilled penman had engrossed it from Lincoln's
final draft, just completed the night before. All it lacked was the Presi-
dent's signature. He dipped his pen, then paused with it suspended over
the expanse of whiteness spread out on his desk, and looked around with
a serious expression. "I never in my life felt more certain that I was
doing right," he said, "than I do in signing this paper. But I have been
receiving calls and shaking hands since 9 o'clock this morning, till my
arm is stiff and numb. Now this signature is one that will be closely ex-
amined, and if they find my hand trembled they will say, 'He had some
compunctions.' But anyway it is going to be done." Slowly and carefully
he signed, not the usual A. Lincoln, but his name in full: Abraham Lin-
coln. The witnesses crowded nearer for a look at the result, then laughed
in relief of nervous tension; for the signature, though "slightly tremu-
lous," as Lincoln himself remarked, was bold and clear. Seward signed
next, the quick, slanting scrawl of the busy administrator, and the great
Unhappy New Year [ 121 ]
seal was affixed, after which it went to its place in the State Department
files (where it later was destroyed by fire) and in the hearts of men,
where it would remain forever, though some of them had doubted lately
that it would even be issued.
It was one thing to claim that by the stroke of a pen the fetters
had been struck from the limbs of five million slaves and that their com-
bined worth of more than a billion dollars was thereby automatically
subtracted from enemy assets. It was quite another, however, to translate
the announcement into fact, especially considering its peculiar limita-
tions. All of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri
were exempt by specific definition within the body of the edict, along
with those portions of Virginia and Louisiana already under Federal
control. Lincoln himself explained that the proclamation had "no consti-
tutional or legal justification, except as a military measure. The exemp-
tions were made because the military necessity did not apply to the ex-
empted localities." He freed no slave within his reach, and whether those
beyond his reach would ever be affected by his pronouncement was de-
pendent on the outcome of the war, which in turn depended on the
southward progress of his armies. Just now that progress, East and West
— once more with the possible exception of Middle Tennessee, where
the issue remained in doubt — was negligible at best and nonexistent for
the most part. Nor did the signs in either direction give promise of early
improvement. Here in the East, in fact, if this morning's conference
with Burnside was any indication of what to expect, the outlook was
downright bleak.
The ruff -whiskered general had arrived in a state of acute dis-
tress, obviously fretted by more than the discomforts of his all-night ride
from Falmouth, and Lincoln was distressed in turn to see him so. He liked
Burnside — almost everyone did, personally — for his courage, for his
impressive military bearing, and for what one subordinate called his "sin-
gle-hearted honesty and unselfishness." All these qualities he had, and
Lincoln, with a feeling of relief after weeks of trying to budge the balky
McClellan, had chosen him in expectation of aggressiveness. The Indiana-
born Rhode Islander had certainly given him that at Fredericksburg, in
overplus indeed, but with a resolution so little tempered by discretion
that critics now were remarking that he waged war in much the same
way some folks played the fiddle, "by main strength and awkwardness."
He himself was the first to admit his shortcomings. He had done so from
the start, and recently in testimony given under oath before a congres-
sional committee he had taken on his shoulders the whole blame for the
late repulse. This was in a way disarming; it had the welcome but un-
familiar sound of natural modesty, so becoming in a truly capable man.
However, there were those who saw it merely as further proof of his un-
[i22] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
fitness for the job he had accepted under protest. Burnside, they said, had
not only admitted his incompetency; he had sworn to it.
When he opened the New Year's conference by asking what lay
behind the telegram advising him not to move against the enemy with-
out notifying Washington beforehand, Lincoln told him of the interview
with the two brigadiers, in which they had stated that the army lacked
confidence in its commander and was in no fit shape to be committed.
Bristling at this evidence of perfidy from below, Burnside demanded to
know their names, but Lincoln declined to divulge them for fear of the
reprisal which he now saw would be visited upon their heads. This fur-
ther increased the general's depression. It might well be true, he said, that
his army had no faith in him; certainly not a single one of his senior com-
manders had approved of the movement he had canceled at Lincoln's sug-
gestion. In fact, he added, plunging deeper into gloom, "It is my belief
that I ought to retire to private life." When Lincoln demurred, Burn-
side's spirits rose a bit: enough, at least, to allow a sudden shift to the
offensive. However low his own stock might have fallen, he said ear-
nestly, he wanted the President to know that in his opinion neither Stan-
ton's nor Halleck's was any higher. A man was apt to be a poor judge
of his own usefulness and the loyalty of his subordinates, but of one thing
he was sure. Neither the Secretary of War nor the general-in-chief had
the confidence of the army — or of the country either for that matter,
he quickly added, though he admitted that Lincoln was probably better
informed on this latter point than he was. At any rate it was his belief
that they too should be removed. . . . Lincoln expressed no opinion as to
whether he could spare Stanton or Halleck, but he assured the unhappy
Burnside that he valued his services highly. He urged him to return at
once to his command and do the best he could, as he was sure he had
done invariably in the past. Burnside replied that his plan was still to cross
the Rappahannock, somewhere above or below Fredericksburg, and at-
tack the rebels on their own ground. Lincoln said that was what he
wanted, too, but prudence sometimes had to be applied, especially when
risky ventures were involved. Whereupon, having secured this approval,
however qualified, the general took his leave, apparently in a somewhat
better frame of mind.
Still the fact remained that he was returning to his army with the
intention of requiring it to pursue a course of action which, by his own
admission, did not have the approval of the ranking subordinates who
would be charged with its execution. The situation was, to say the least,
loaded with possibilities of disaster. Here, Lincoln saw, was where the
general-in-chief would fit into the picture; here was where Halleck could
begin to perform the principal duty for which he had been summoned to
the capital almost six months ago. He could go down to Falmouth for a
first-hand look at the lay of the land and a talk with the disaffected corps
commanders, then come back and submit his recommendations as to
Unhappy Ne<w Year [ 123 J
whether Burnside should be given his head or halted and replaced. Ac-
cordingly, before going upstairs to dress for the New Year's reception,
Lincoln took out a sheet of paper and wrote the owl-eyed general a let-
ter explaining what it was he wanted him to do. "If in such a difficulty as
this you do not help," he wrote, "you fail me precisely in the point for
which I sought your assistance." The tone was somewhat tart, doubtless
because Lincoln was irked at having to ask for what should have been
forthcoming as a matter of course, and he added: "Your military skill is
useless to me, if you will not do this."
The letter was forwarded through Stanton, who gave it to Hal-
leck that same morning at the reception. "Old Brains," as he was called,
was taken aback. Twice already in this war he had ventured into the field
— one occasion was the inchworm advance on Corinth, back in May,
when all he got for his pains was an empty town, plus the guffaws that
went with being hoodwinked; the other was his trip to see McClellan
down on the York-James peninsula, shortly after his arrival East in late
July, when he ordered the withdrawal that had permitted Lee to concen-
trate against Pope with such disastrous results on the plains of Manassas
— and he was having no more of such exposure to the jangle of alarums
and excursions. He prized the sweatless quiet of his office, where he could
scratch his elbows in seclusion and ponder the imponderables of war.
Lincoln's letter was a wrench, not so much because of what it said —
which was, after all, little more than a definition of Halleck's duties —
but because of the way it said it. The fact that his chief had thought it
necessary to put the thing on record, in black and white, instead of mak-
ing the suggestion verbally, which would have left no blot, seemed to
him to indicate a lack of confidence. His reaction was immediate and de-
cisive. As soon as the reception was over he went to his office, wrote out
his resignation, and sent it at once to the Secretary of War.
Lincoln heard of this development from Stanton late that after-
noon, following the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Saddened
though he was by the general's reaction, which deprived him, as he said,
of the professional advice he badly needed at this juncture, he still did not
want to lose the services of Old Brains, such as they were. To mollify the
offended man he recalled the letter that same day and put it away in his
files with the indorsement: "Withdrawn, because considered harsh by
General Halleck." He was pleased when the general then agreed to re-
main at his post, even though he amounted, as Lincoln subsequently re-
marked, to "little more . . . than a first-rate clerk." The fact was, in spite
of his objection to what he called "Halleck's habitual attitude of demur,"
he valued his opinions highly, especially those on theoretical or proce-
dural matters. "He is a military man, has had a military education. I
brought him here to give me military advice." So Lincoln defended him,
and added: "However you may doubt or disagree [with] Halleck, he is
very apt to be right in the end." Then too, since he knew something of
[124] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
the unfortunate general's sufferings from hemorrhoids, which made him
gruff as a sore-tailed bear and caused him to be avoided by all who
could possibly stay beyond his reach, Lincoln's sympathy was aroused.
Once when he was asked why he did not get rid of so unpleasant a crea-
ture, he replied: "Well, the fact is the man has no friends. [He] should
be taken care of."
All in all, it had been a wearing day, and as Lincoln went to bed
that night (having attended to several other less important matters, such
as the complaint made to him by "an old lady of genteel appearance"
that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, her boarding house
near the corner of Tenth and E Streets was about to be commandeered
by the War Department; "I know nothing about it myself," he wrote
Stanton, "but promised to bring it to your notice") he might well have
slept the sleep of nervous exhaustion: unless, that is, he was kept awake
by an aching right hand, which had been squeezed and pumped by more
than a thousand people in the course of this busy New Year's, or by the
knowledge that from now on — or at any rate until he found the man
who, as he said, could "face the arithmetic" — he would have to continue
to act as his own general-in-chief, as in fact he had been doing all along,
leaving the West Pointer who occupied the post at present to act as little
more than a clerk, albeit a first-rate one.
In the days that followed hard on this, the one touch of relief in a
prevailing military gloom was the news that Bragg had retreated from
Stones River and that Rosecrans had taken Murfreesboro. Lincoln would
have preferred a bolder pursuit, but he was grateful all the same for what
he got. "I can never forget, while I remember anything," he told Rose-
crans some months later, looking back, "that at about the end of last year,
and beginning of this, you gave us a hard-earned victory which, had
there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over."
The law of diminishing utility obtained here in reverse; by contrast, this
one glimmer swelled to bonfire proportions. All else was blackness —
even afloat, where up to now the salt-water navy (so long at least as it
had kept to its proper medium and stayed out of the muddy Mississippi)
had suffered not a single major check in all the more than twenty months
since the opening shots were fired at Sumter. Now suddenly all the news
was bad and the checks frequent: not only at Galveston, where Magrud-
er's cotton-clads had wrecked and panicked the Union warships, driving
them from the bay, but also at other points along and off the rebel shore,
before and after that disaster.
The first of these several naval wounds was self-inflicted, so to
speak, or at any rate was not the result of enemy action. This did not
make it any less painful or sad, however, for though the loss amounted
to only one ship, that one was the most famous in the navy. Under tow
off stormy Hatteras, with waves breaking over her deck and starting
Unhappy New Year [ 125 ]
the oakum from her turret seam, the little ironclad Monitor — David
to the Merrimac's Goliath in Hampton Roads almost ten months ago
— foundered and went to the bottom in the first hour of the last day of
the year, taking four of her officers and a dozen of her crew down
with her. This was hard news for the North, and close on its heels came
word of what happened in Galveston harbor the following day. By way
of reaction, the squadron commander at Pensacola ordered the 24-gun
screw steamer Brooklyn and six gunboats to haul off from the block-
ade of Mobile and proceed at once to Texas to retrieve the situation.
They arrived on January 8, but found there was little they could do ex-
cept resume the blockade outside the harbor and engage in long-range
shelling of the island town, now fast in rebel hands. They kept this up for
three days, with little or no profit, until on January 1 1 they were
handed another jolt.
About an hour before sundown the Brooklyn's lookout spotted
a bark-rigged vessel, apparently a merchantman, approaching from the
south. When she saw the blockaders she halted as if surprised, and the
Union flag officer, finding her manner suspicious, ordered the 10-gun
sidewheel steamer Hatteras to heave her to for investigation of her
papers. As the gunboat approached, she drew off and the chase began.
It was a strange business. She ran awkwardly, despite the trimness of her
lines, and though she managed to maintain her distance, on through twi-
light into a moonless darkness relieved only by the stars, the blockader
had no difficulty in keeping her within sight. At last she hove to, as if ex-
hausted, her sails furled. The Hatteras closed to within a hundred
yards, stopped dead, and put a boat out. Before the boarding party
reached her, however, a loud clear voice identified the vessel: "This is the
Confederate States steamer Alabama; fire!" and a broadside lurched her
sideways in the water, striking the Hatteras hard amidships so that she
too recoiled, as if in horror. Ten guns to eight, the Federal outweighed
her adversary by one hundred tons, but the advantage of surprise was
decisive. Though she promptly returned the fire, the fight was brief.
Within thirteen minutes, her walking beam shot away and her magazine
flooded, she hoisted the signal for surrender.
"Have you struck?"
"I have."
"Cease fire! Cease fire!"
Within another six minutes she was on the bottom, thirty-fifth on
the list of vessels taken, sunk, or ransomed by Captain Raphael Semmes,
who would add another thirty-six to the list before the year was out.
He had read in captured Boston newspapers that the 30,000-man
expedition under Banks was scheduled to rendezvous off Galveston on
January 10 for the conquest of Texas, and he had shown up the follow-
ing day, intending to get among the transports under cover of darkness,
just outside the bar, and sink them left and right. When he saw the gun-
[ 126] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
boats shelling the town, however, he knew it had been retaken, and he
seized the opportunity to realize his life's ambition to stage a hand-to-
hand fight with an enemy warship, provided he could lure one into pur-
suit and single combat: which he had done, fluttering just beyond her
reach like a wounded bird until, having her altogether to himself, he
turned and pounced. He was proud of the outcome of this "first yardarm
engagement between steamers at sea," but just now his problem was to
get away before his victim's friends, warned of the hoax by the flash
and roar of guns, came up to avenge her. Pausing long enough to pick
up the 1 1 8 survivors — about as many as he had in his whole crew,
whose only casualty was a carpenter's mate with a cheek wound — he
doused his lights and made off through the night. The Brooklyn and
the other gunboats, arriving shortly thereafter, saw no sign of the Hat-
ter as until dawn showed bits of her wreckage tossed about by the
waves. By that time the Alabama was a hundred miles away, running
hard for Jamaica, where Semmes and his crew — that "precious set of
rascals," as he called them, being known in turn as "Old Beeswax" be-
cause of the needle-sharp tips to his long black mustache — would
parole their captives and celebrate their exploit. Chagrined, the Union
skippers turned back to resume their fruitless shelling of the island, bit-
terly conscious of the fact that instead of redeeming the late Galveston
disaster, as they had intended, they had enlarged it.
Word of this no sooner reached Washington than it was followed,
four days later, by news that was potentially even worse. At Mobile,
where the departure of the Brooklyn and her consorts had weakened the
cordon drawn across the entrance to the bay, the other famous Con-
federate raider Florida had been bottled up since early September, when
she slipped in through the blockade with her crew and captain, Com-
mander John N. Maffitt, down with yellow fever. By now they were
very much up and about, however: as they proved on the night of
January 15, when they steered the rebel cruiser squarely between two
of the largest and fastest ships in the blockade squadron and made un-
scathed for the open sea, leaving her frantic pursuers far behind. Within
ten days she had captured and sunk three U.S. merchantmen, the first
of more then twenty she would take before midsummer, in happy ri-
valry with her younger sister the Alabama. Secretary Welles had been
so furious over her penetration of the cordon, four months back, that
he had summarily dismissed the squadron commander from the navy,
despite the fact that he was a nephew of Commodore Edward Preble of
Constitution fame; but this repetition of the exploit, outward bound, was
seen by some as a reflection on the Secretary himself and a substantia-
tion of the protest a prominent New Yorker had made to Lincoln, on
the occasion of the Connecticut journalist's appointment, that if he
would "select an attractive figurehead, to be adorned with an elaborate
wig and luxuriant whiskers, and transfer it from the prow of a ship to
Unhappy New Year [ 127 ]
the entrance of the Navy Department, it would in my opinion be quite as
serviceable . . . and less expensive."
Nor was this by any means the last bad news to reach the De-
partment from down on the Gulf before the month was out. On January
21, at the end of the week that had opened with the Florida's escape,
John Magruder staged in Texas — apparently, like Browning's thrush,
lest it be thought that the first had been no more than a fine careless rap-
ture — a re-enactment of the previous descent on the Union flotilla in
Galveston harbor. This time the scene was Sabine Pass, eighty miles to
the east, and once more two cotton-clad steamboats were employed,
with like results. The Morning Light, a sloop of war, and the schooner
Velocity, finding themselves unable to maneuver in all the confusion,
struck their flags and surrendered 1 1 guns and more than a hundred sea-
men to the jubilant Confederates who had come booming down the pass
with a rattle of small arms and a caterwaul of high-pitched rebel yells.
Next day the blockade was re-established by gunboats sent over from
the flotilla cruising of! Galveston, but there was little satisfaction in the
fact, considering the increase of tension in the wardrooms and on look-
out stations. However, a lull now followed, almost as if the crowing reb-
els were giving the bluejackets time to digest the three bitter pills ad-
ministered in the course of the past three weeks.
For Lincoln there was no such lull, nor did there seem likely to
be one so long as the present commander of the Army of the Po-
tomac remained at his post. He had chosen Burnside primarily as a man
of action, and however far the ruff -whiskered general had fallen short
of other expectations, from the day of his appointment he had never
done less than his fervent best to measure up to this one. The Fred-
ericksburg fight, pressed despite a snarl-up of preparatory matters which
had turned it into something quite different from what had been in-
tended at the outset, was an instance of that determination to be up and
doing, and Lincoln was in constant trepidation that a similar sequence of
snarl-ups — the canceled year-end maneuver, for example — presaged a
similar disaster. The signs were unmistakably there.
Four days after the New Year's conference Burnside informed
the President that he still intended to attempt another Rappahannock
crossing, and had in fact alerted his engineers, although his generals
practically unanimously remained opposed to the movement. Inclosed
with the note was his resignation; Lincoln could either sustain him or let
him return to civilian life. Another letter went to Halleck this same
day. "I do not ask you to assume any responsibility in reference to the
mode or place of crossing," Burnside wrote, "but it seems to me that,
in making so hazardous a movement, I should receive some general di-
rections from you as to the advisability of crossing at some point, as
you are necessarily well informed of the effect at this time upon other
I iz8] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
parts of the army of a success or a repulse." However, this attempt to
wring a definite personal commitment from the general-in-chief was
no more productive than Lincoln's had been. Halleck — described by a
correspondent as resembling "an oleaginous Methodist parson in regi-
mentals," with a "large, tabular, Teutonic" face — replied on January 7,
administering an elementary textbook strategy lecture. He had always
been in favor of an advance, he said, but he cautioned Burnside to "ef-
fect a crossing in a position where we can meet the enemy on favorable
or even equal terms. ... If the enemy should concentrate his forces
at the place you have selected for a crossing, make it a feint and try
another place. Again, the circumstances at the time may be such as to
render an attempt to cross the entire army not advisable. In that case
theory suggests that, while the enemy concentrates at that point, ad-
vantages can be gained by crossing smaller forces at other points, to
cut off his lines, destroy his communication, and capture his rear guards,
outposts, &c. The great object is ... to injure him all you can with
the least injury to yourself. ... As you yourself admit, it devolves
upon you to decide upon the time, place, and character of the crossing
which you may attempt. I can only advise that an attempt be made,
and as early as possible. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
H. W. Halleck, General-in-Chief."
Burnside had asked for "general directions." What he got was
very general advice. Tacked onto it, however, was a presidential in-
dorsement in which, after urging him to "be cautious, and do not un-
derstand that the Government or the country is driving you," Lincoln
added: "I do not yet see how I could profit by changing the command
of the Army of the Potomac, and if I did, I should not do it by accepting
the resignation of your commission." The "yet" might well have given
Burnside pause, but at any rate he had a sort of left-handed reply to his
ultimatum demanding that the President either fire or sustain him. He
prepared therefore to go ahead with his plan for an upstream crossing,
beyond Lee's left, and a southward march to some rearward point
athwart the Confederate lines of supply and communication. This time
he intended to guard against failure by feeling his way carefully before-
hand. After originally selecting United States Ford as the bridgehead, a
dozen miles above Fredericksburg, he rejected it when a cavalry recon-
naissance showed the position well covered by Confederate guns, and
selected instead Banks Ford, which was not only less heavily protected
but was also less than half as far away. By January 19 his preparations
were complete. Next morning his soldiers assembled under full packs
for the march, stood there while a general order was read to them,
and set out with its spirited phrases ringing in their ears: "The com-
manding general announces to the Army of the Potomac that they are
about to meet the enemy once more The auspicious moment
Unhappy New Year [ 129 ]
seems to have arrived to strike a great and mortal blow to the rebellion,
and to gain that decisive victory which is due to the country."
It took several hours for so many men to clear their camps, but
once this had been done the march went well — indeed, auspiciously —
until midafternoon, when a slow drizzle began. For a time it seemed
no more than a passing shower, but the sun went down behind a steely
curtain of true rain, which was pattering steadily by nightfall. All night
it fell; by morning it was drumming without letup. Looking out from
their sodden bivouacs, in which they could find not even enough dry
twigs for boiling coffee, the soldiers could hardly recognize yesterday'?
Virginia. "The whole country was an ocean of mud," one wrote. "The
roads were rivers of deep mire, and the heavy rain had made the ground
a vast mortar bed." Presently, as the troops fell in coffeeless to resume
the march in a downpour that showed no sign of slacking, broad-tired
wagons loaded with big pontoons (despite all Burnside's precautions
against snarl-ups, the pontoniers had been late in getting the word)
churned the roads to near-impassability. Their six-mule teams were
doubled and even tripled, but to small avail. Then long ropes were at-
tached to the cumbersome things, affording hand-holds for as many as
150 men at a time, but this still did no real good according to a cor-
respondent who watched them strain and fail: "They would flounder
through the mire for a few feet — the gang of Lilliputians with their
huge-ribbed Gulliver — and then give up breathlessly." Guns were
even more perverse. Whole regiments pulled them along with the help
of prolonges, leaving deep troughs in the roadbed to mark their prog-
ress, but if they stopped for a breather, without first putting brush or
logs under the axle, the gun would begin to sink and, what was worse,
would keep on sinking until only its muzzle showed, and the men
would have to dig it out with shovels. "One might fancy that some new
geologic cataclysm had overtaken the world," a reporter declared, sur-
veying the desolation, "and that he saw around him the elemental
wrecks left by another Deluge." When Burnside himself, trailing a
gaudy kite-tail of staff officers, came riding through this waste of
mired confusion, one irreverent teamster whose mules and wagon were
stalled like all the rest called out to him across the sea of mud: "General,
the auspicious moment has arrived!"
He was undaunted, even in the face of this. Though the rain
was still coming down steadily, without a suggestion of a pause, and
though most of his soldiers were thinking, as one recalled, that "it was
no longer a question of how to go forward, but how to get back,"
Burnside no more had it in mind to quit now than he had had six
weeks ago, when he had kept throwing some of these same men against
the fuming base of Marye's Heights. Today was finished but there
was still tomorrow, and he gave orders that the march would be re-
[i 3 o] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
sumed at dawn. However, in an attempt to raise the dejected spirits of
the troops, he directed that a ration of whiskey be issued to all ranks.
Somehow the barrels were brought up in the night and the distribution
made next morning. The result, in several cases — for the officers poured
liberally and the stuff went into empty stomachs — was spectacular. For
example, rival regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts promptly
decided the time had come for them to settle a long-term feud, and
when a Maine outfit stepped in to try and stop the scuffle, the result
was the biggest three-sided fist fight in the history of the world. Mean-
while, from grandstand seats on the crests of hills across the way, the
rebels were enjoying all of this enormously. Pickets jeered from the
south bank of the Rappahannock, and one butternut cluster went so far
as to hold up a crudely lettered placard: This way to Richmond, un-
derlined with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction. Finally, about
noon, even Burnside saw the hopelessness of the situation. He gave or-
ders and the long, bedraggled files of men faced painfully about. The
Mud March — so called in the official records — was over.
It was over, that is for most of them, except for the getting back
to camp and the consequences. For some, though, it was over then and
there; they kept slogging northward, right on out of the war. Desertion
reached an all-time high. Sick lists had never been so long. Morale
hit an all-time low. "I never knew so much discontent in the army be-
fore," an enlisted diarist wrote. "A great many say that they 'don't
care whether school keeps or not,' for they think there is a destructive
fate hovering over our army." This reaction was by no means limited to
the ranks, and what was more the men in higher positions were specific
in their placement of the blame. "I came to the conclusion that Burnside
was fast losing his mind," Franklin was presently saying, and Hooker
was even more emphatic in the expression of his views. Without limit-
ing his criticism to the luckless army commander, whom he considered
merely inept, he told a newsman that the President was an imbecile,
not only for keeping Burnside on but also in his own right, and that the
administration itself was "all played out." What the country needed,
Fighting Joe declared, and the sooner the better, too, was a dictator.
. . . Much of this reached army headquarters in one form or another,
and Burnside's thin-stretched patience finally snapped under the double
burden of abuse and ridicule. Early next evening, January 23, while his
troops were still straggling forlornly back to their camps, he wired
Lincoln: "I have prepared some very important orders, and I want to
see you before issuing them. Can I see you alone if I am at the White
House after midnight?"
In mud and fog and darkness he left headquarters about 9
o'clock in an ambulance, lost the road, found it, then lost it again, bump-
ing into dead mules, stalled caissons, and other derelicts of the late
lamented march. Finally, near midnight, he arrived at the Falmouth rail-
Unhappy New Year [ 131 ]
head, two miles from his starting point, only to learn that the special
locomotive he had ordered held had given him up and chuffed away on
other business. He took a lantern and set out down the track to meet it
coming back, flagged and boarded it, and at last got onto a steamer at
Aquia Landing. It was midmorning before he was with Lincoln at the
White House, but the orders he brought for his perusal were no less
startling for having been delayed. What Burnside was suggesting — in
fact ordering, "subject to the approval of the President" — was the im-
mediate dismissal of four officers from the service and the relief of six
from further duty with the Army of the Potomac. The first group was
headed by Joe Hooker, who was referred to as "a man unfit to hold an
important commission during a crisis like the present, when so much
patience, charity, confidence, consideration, and patriotism are due from
every soldier in the field." Next came Brigadier General W.T.H. Brooks,
a division commander accused of "using language tending to demoral-
ize his command." The other two, lumped together in one paragraph,
were Newton and Cochrane, whose names Burnside had learned simply
by checking the morning reports to see what general officers had been
on pass at the time of their late-December conference with Lincoln.
These four were to be cashiered. The six who were to be relieved
were two major generals — Franklin and W. F. Smith, Newton's and
Cochrane's corps commander — three brigadiers (including, by some
strange oversight, Cochrane, who supposedly had just been cashiered)
and one lieutenant colonel, a lowly assistant adjutant who was appar-
ently to be struck by an incidental pellet from the blast that was to bring
down all those other, larger birds.
Burnside left the order with the startled President, telling him
plainly to make a choice between approving it or accepting its author's
resignation from command of an army that included such a set of vil-
lains. The order was dated the 23 d, a Friday. Lincoln took what was
left of Saturday to think the matter over. Then on Sunday, January 25,
the ruff -whiskered general got his answer in the form of a general order
of Lincoln's own, directing: 1 ) that Burnside be relieved of command,
upon his own request; 2) that Sumner be relieved, also upon his own
request; 3) that Franklin be relieved, period; and 4) "that Maj. Gen.
J. Hooker be assigned to the command of the Army of the Potomac."
This last was a hard thing for the departing commander to ac-
cept. He had planned to blow up Hooker, but instead he had blown him-
self up, and Hooker into his place. It was hard, too, for Sumner and for
Franklin; the fact that both were the new commander's seniors neces-
sitated their transfer after long association with the eastern army. Lin-
coln did not so much regret having to sidetrack Franklin, whose lack of
aggressiveness at South Mountain and Fredericksburg was notorious, but
he was sorry to have to offend the superannuated Sumner, who had
saved the day at Fair Oaks and fought well on every field until his
[132] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
soul was sickened by the slaughter at Antietam. Nor had he hurt without
regret the normally good-natured Burnside, whose forthright honesty in
admission of faults and acceptance of blame was so different from
what was ordinarily encountered. However, what there had been of
hesitation was mainly based on what Lincoln knew of Fighting Joe him-
self, who was next in line for the assignment. He had heard from others
beside Burnside of Hooker's infidelity to his chief, and also of his ex-
coriation of the Washington authorities. In fact, when the Times re-
porter who had talked recently with Hooker came to Lincoln on this
Sunday and told him of what the general had said about the administra-
tion's shortcomings and the need for a dictator, Lincoln showed no
trace of surprise. "That is all true; Hooker does talk badly," he admitted.
But he decided, all the same, that Hooker was what the army and the
country needed in the present crisis — a fighter who, unlike Burnside,
had self-confidence and a reputation for canniness. "Now there is Joe
Hooker," Lincoln had remarked a short time back. "He can fight. I think
that is pretty well established."
And so it was. Without consulting Halleck or Stanton or anyone
else, and despite the admitted risk to the national cause and the inciden-
tal injury to Burnside and Sumner, he made his choice and acted on it.
However, before the new commander had been two days at his post,
Lincoln sent for him and handed him a letter which was calculated to
let him know how much he knew about him, as well as to advise him
of what was now expected:
General:
I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of
course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient rea-
sons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some
things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe
you to be a brave and a skillful soldier, which of course I like. I also
believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you
are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not
an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable
bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General
Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your am-
bition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a
great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable
brother officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your re-
cently saying that both the army and the government needed a dicta-
tor. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given
you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up
dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk
the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of
its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do
for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided
to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withhold-
Unhappy New Year [133]
ing confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you
as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were
alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit
prevails in it.
And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy
and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Yours very truly
A. Lincoln
X 2 X
McClernand, conferring with Sherman at Milliken's Bend on the day
after his arrival from upriver — it was January 3 ; the two were aboard
the former Illinois politician's headquarters boat, the Tigress, tied up to
bank twenty-odd miles above Vicksburg — did not blame the red-
haired Ohioan for the repulse suffered earlier that week at Chickasaw
Bluffs; Sherman, he said in a letter to Stanton that same day, had "proba-
bly done all in the present case anyone could have done." The fault
was Grant's, and Grant's alone. Grant had designed the operation and
then, taking off half-cocked in his eagerness for glory that was right-
fully another's, had failed to co-operate as promised, leaving Sherman to
hold the bag and do the bleeding. So McClernand said, considerably em-
bittered by the knowledge that a good part of the nearly two thousand
casualties lost up the Yazoo were recruits he had been sending down
from Cairo for the past two months, only to have them snatched from
under him while his back was turned. "I believe I am superseded.
Please advise me," he had wired Lincoln as soon as he got word of
what was afoot. But permission to go downriver had not come in time
for him to circumvent the circumvention; the fighting was over before
he got there. He took what consolation he could from having been
spared a share in a fiasco. At least he was with his men again — what
was left of them, at any rate — and ready to take over. "Soon as I shall
have verified the condition of the army," he told Stanton, "I will assume
command of it."
He did so the following day. Christening his new command "The
Army of the Mississippi" in nominal expression of his intentions, or at
any rate his hopes, he divided it into two corps of two divisions each,
the first under George Morgan and the second under Sherman —
which, incidentally, was something of a bitter pill for the latter to swal-
low, since he believed a large share of the blame for the recent failure up
the Yazoo rested with Morgan, who had promised that in ten minutes
he would "be on those hills," but who apparently had forgot to wind
his watch. However that might be, McClernand now had what he had
been wanting all along: the chance to prove his ingenuity and dem-
onstrate his mettle in independent style. His eyes brightened with an-
[134] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
ticipation of triumph as he spoke of "opening the navigation of the
Mississippi," of "cutting my way to the sea," and so forth. For all the
expansiveness of his mood, however, the terms in which he expressed it
were more general than specific; or, as Sherman later said, "the modus
operandi was not so clear."
In this connection — being anxious, moreover, to balance his re-
cent defeat with a success — the Ohioan had a suggestion. During the
Chickasaw Bluffs expedition the packet Blue Wing, coming south out of
Memphis with a cargo of mail and ammunition, had been captured by a
Confederate gunboat that swooped down on her near the mouth of the
Arkansas and carried her forty miles up that river to Arkansas Post,
an outpost established by the French away back in 1685, where the reb-
els had constructed an inclosed work they called Fort Hindman, gar-
risoned by about 5000 men. So long as this threat to the main Federal
supply line existed, Sherman said, operations against Vicksburg would
be subject to such harassment, and it was his belief that, by way of pre-
amble to McClernand's larger plans — whatever they were, precisely
— he ought to go up the Arkansas and abolish the threat by "thrashing
out Fort Hindman."
McClernand was not so sure. He had suffered no defeat that
needed canceling, and what was more he had larger things in mind
than the capture of an obscure and isolated post. However, he agreed to
go with Sherman for a discussion of the project with Porter, whose co-
operation would be required. They steamed downriver and found the
admiral aboard his headquarters boat, the Black Hawk, anchored in the
mouth of the Yazoo. It was late, near midnight; Porter received them
in his nightshirt. He too was not so sure at first. He was short of coal,
he said, and the ironclads, which would be needed to reduce the fort,
could not burn wood. Presently, though, as Sherman continued to press
his suit, asking at least for the loan of a couple of gunboats, which he
offered to tow up the river and thus save coal, Porter — perhaps re-
flecting that he had on his record that same blot which a victory would
erase — not only agreed to give the landsmen naval support; "Suppose
I go along myself?" he added. Suddenly, on second thought, McClern-
and was convinced: so much so, indeed, that instead of merely sending
Sherman to do the job with half the troops, as Sherman had expected,
he decided it was worth the undivided attention of the whole army
and its commander, whose record, if blotless, was also blank. With no
minus to cancel, this plus would stand alone, auspicious, and make a
good beginning as he stepped off on the road that led to glory and
the White House.
He took three days to get ready, then (but not until then) sent
a message by way of Memphis to notify Grant that he was off — one
of his purposes being, as he said, "the counteraction of the moral effect
of the failure of the attack near Vicksburg and the reinspiration of
Unhappy New Year [ 135 ]
the forces repulsed by making them the champions of new, important,
and successful enterprises." He left Milliken's Bend that same day, Janu-
ary 8, his 30,000 soldiers still aboard their fifty transports, accompanied
by 1 3 rams and gunboats, three of which were ironclads and packed his
Sunday punch. By way of deception the flotilla steamed past the
mouth of the Arkansas, then into the White, from which a cutoff led
back into the bypassed river. Late the following afternoon the troops be-
gan debarking three miles below Fort Hindman, a square bastioned work
set on high ground at the head of a horseshoe bend, whose dozen guns
included three 9-inch Columbiads, one to each riverward casemate, and
a hard-hitting 8-inch rifle. A good portion of the defending butternut
infantry, supported by six light pieces of field artillery, occupied a line
of rifle-pits a mile and a half below the fort, but these were quickly
driven out when the gunboats forged ahead and took them under fire
from the flank. Late the following afternoon, when the debarkation
had been completed and the four divisions were maneuvering for posi-
tions from which to launch an assault, the ironclads took the lead. The
Louisville, the De Kalb, and the Cincinnati advanced in line abreast to
within four hundred yards of the fort, pressing the attack bows on,
one to each casemate, while the thinner-skinned vessels followed close
behind to throw in shrapnel and light rifled shell. It was hot work for a
time as the defenders stood to their guns, firing with precision; the
Cincinnati, for example, took eight hits from 9-inch shells on her pilot
house alone, though Porter reported proudly that they "glanced off like
peas against glass"; the only naval casualties were suffered from un-
lucky shots that came in through the ports. When the admiral broke off
the fight because of darkness, the fort was silent, apparently over-
whelmed. But when Sherman, reconnoitering by moonlight, drew close
to the enemy outposts he could hear the Confederates at work with
spades and axes, drawing a new line under cover of their heavy guns
and preparing to continue to resist despite the long numerical odds.
Crouched behind a stump in the predawn darkness of January 1 1 he
heard a rebel bugler sound what he later called "as pretty a reveille as
I ever listened to."
Shortly before noon he sent word that he was ready. His corps
was on the right, Morgan's on the left; both faced the newly drawn
enemy line which extended across the rear of the fort, from the river
to an impassable swamp one mile west. McClernand, having established
a command post in the woods and sent a lookout up a tree to observe
and report the progress of events, passed the word to Porter, who or-
dered the ironclads forward at 1.30 to renew yesterday's attack. Sher-
man heard the clear ring of the naval guns, the fire increasing in volume
and rapidity as the range was closed. Then he and Morgan went for-
ward, the troops advancing by rushes across the open fields, "once or
twice falling to the ground," as Sherman said, "for a sort of rest or
[136] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
pause." As they approached the fort they saw above its parapet the pen-
nants of the ironclads, which had smothered the heavy guns by now
and were giving the place a close-up pounding. Simultaneously, white
flags began to break out all along the rebel line. "Cease firing! Cease
firing!" Sherman cried, and rode forward to receive the fort's surrender.
But that was not to be: not just yet, at any rate, and not to Sher-
man. Colonel John Dunnington, the fort's commander, a former U.S.
naval officer, insisted on surrendering to Porter, and Brigadier General
Thomas J. Churchill, commander of the field force, did not want to
surrender at all. As Sherman approached, Churchill was arguing with his
subordinates, wanting to know by whose authority the white flags had
been shown. (He had received an order from Little Rock the night be-
fore, while there was still a chance to get away, "to hold out till help
arrives or until all dead" — which Holmes later explained with the com-
ment: "It never occurred to me when the order was issued that such an
overpowering command would be devoted to an end so trivial.") One
brigade commander, Colonel James Deshler of Alabama, a fiery West
Pointer in his late twenties — "small but very handsome," Sherman
called him — did not want to stop fighting even now, with the Yankees
already inside his works. When Sherman, wishing as he said "to soften
the blow of defeat," remarked in a friendly way that he knew a family
of Deshlers in his home state and wondered if they were relations, the
Alabamian hotly disclaimed kinship with anyone north of the Ohio
River; whereupon the red-headed general changed his tone and, as he
later wrote, "gave him a piece of my mind that he did not relish." How-
ever, all this was rather beside the point. The fighting was over and the
butternut troops stacked arms. The Federals had suffered 3 1 navy and
1032 army casualties, for a total of 140 killed and 923 wounded. The
Confederates, on the other hand, had had only 109 men hit; but that left
4791 to be taken captive, including a regiment that marched in from
Pine Bluff during the surrender negotiations.
McClernand, who had got back aboard the Tigress and come
forward, was tremendously set up. "Glorious! Glorious!" he kept ex-
claiming. "My star is ever in the ascendant." He could scarcely con-
tain himself. "I had a man up a tree," he said. "I'll make a splendid
report!"
Grant by now was in Memphis. He had arrived the day before,
riding in ahead of the main body, which was still on the way under
McPherson, near the end of its long retrogade movement from Coffee-
ville, northward through the scorched wreckage of Holly Springs, then
westward by way of Grand Junction and LaGrange. Having heard no
word from Sherman, he knew nothing of his friend's defeat down-
river — optimistic as always, he was even inclined to credit rumors that
the Vicksburg defenses had crumbled under assault from the Yazoo —
Unhappy New Year [ *37 ]
until the evening of his arrival, when he received McClernand's letter
from Milliken's Bend informing him of the need for "reinspiration of the
forces repulsed."
This was something of a backhand slap, at least by implication —
McClernand seemed to be saying that he would set right what Grant
had bungled — but what disturbed him most was the Illinois general's
expressed intention to withdraw upriver for what he called "new, im-
portant, and successful enterprises." For one thing, if Banks was on the
way up from New Orleans in accordance with the instructions for a
combined assault on Vicksburg, it would leave him unsupported when
he got there. For another, any division of effort was wrong as long as
the true objective remained unaccomplished, and Grant said so in no un-
certain terms next morning when he replied to McClernand's letter: "I
do not approve of your move on the Post of Arkansas while the other is
in abeyance. It will lead to the loss of men without a result. ... It
might answer for some of the purposes you suggest, but certainly not as
a military movement looking to the accomplishment of the one great
result, the capture of Vicksburg. Unless you are acting under authority
not derived from me, keep your command where it can soonest be as-
sembled for the renewal of the attack on Vicksburg. . . . From the best
information I have, Milliken's Bend is the proper place for you to be,
and unless there is some great reason of which I am not advised you
will immediately proceed to that point and await the arrival of reinforce-
ments and General Banks' expedition, keeping me fully advised of your
movements."
He expressed his opinion more briefly in a telegram sent to Hal-
leck that afternoon: "General McClernand has fallen back to White
River, and gone on a wild-goose chase to the Post of Arkansas. I am
ready to reinforce, but must await further information before knowing
what to do." The general-in-chief replied promptly the following morn-
ing, January 12: "You are hereby authorized to relieve General Mc-
Clernand from command of the expedition against Vicksburg, giving
it to the next in rank or taking it yourself."
Grant now had what he wanted. Formerly he had moved with
caution in the prosecution of his private war, by no means sure that
in wrecking McClernand he would not be calling down the thunder on
his own head; but not now. Halleck almost certainly would have dis-
cussed so important a matter with Lincoln before adding this ultimate
weapon to Grant's arsenal and assuring him that there would be no re-
strictions from above as to its use. In short, Grant could proceed without
fear of retaliation except from the victim himself, whom he outranked.
However, two pieces of information that came to hand within the next
twenty-four hours forestalled delivery of the blow. First, he learned
that Port Hudson was a more formidable obstacle than he had formerly
supposed, which meant that it was unlikely that Banks's upriver thrust
[ i 3 8] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
would reach Vicksburg at any early date. And, second, he received next
day from McClernand himself the "splendid report" announcing the fall
of Arkansas Post and the capture of "a large number of prisoners, vari-
ously estimated at from 7000 to 10,000, together with all [their] stores,
animals, and munitions of war." Not only was the urgency for a hookup
with Banks removed, but to proceed against McClernand now would be
to attack a public hero in his first full flush of victory; besides which,
Grant had also learned that the inception of what he had called the
"wild-goose chase" had been upon the advice of his friend Sherman, and
this put a different complexion on his judgment as to the military sound-
ness of the expedition. All that remained was to play the old army
game — which Grant well knew how to do, having had it played against
him with such success, nine years ago in California, that he had been
nudged completely out of the service. When the time came for pounc-
ing he would pounce, but not before. Meanwhile he would wait, watch-
ing and building up his case as he did so.
This did not mean that he intended to sit idly by while McClern-
and continued to gather present glory; not by a long shot. Four days
later, January 17 — McClernand having returned as ordered to the Mis-
sissippi, awaiting further instructions at Napoleon, just below the mouth
of the Arkansas — Grant got aboard a steamboat headed south from
the Memphis wharf. Before leaving he wired McPherson, who had
called a halt at LaGrange to rest his troops near the end of their long re-
treat from Coffeeville: "It is my present intention to command the ex-
pedition down the river in person."
Banks was going to be a lot longer in reaching Vicksburg than
Grant knew, and more was going to detain him than the guns that
bristled atop the bluff at Port Hudson. After a sobering look at this
bastion he decided that his proper course of action, before attempting
a reduction of that place or a sprint past its frowning batteries, would be
a move up the opposite bank of the big river, clearing out the various
nests of rebels who otherwise would interfere with his progress by har-
assing his flank as he moved upstream. Brigadier General Godfrey
Weitzel, a twenty-eight-year-old West Pointer who already had been sta-
tioned in that direction by Ben Butler, was reinforced by troops from the
New Orleans and Baton Rouge garrisons and told to make the region
west of those two cities secure from molestation. He built a stout de-
fensive work at Donaldsonville, commanding the head of Bayou La
Fourche, and threw up intrenchments at Brashear City, blocking the
approach from Berwick Bay. Then, crossing the bay with his mobile
force on January 13, he entered and began to ascend the Teche, ac-
companied by three gunboats. This brought him into sudden contact
next morning with Richard Taylor, who fought briefly and fell back,
Unhappy New Year [139]
sinking the armed steamer Cotton athwart the bayou as he did so, cork-
ing it against farther penetration. Weitzel, who had lost 33 killed and
wounded, including one of the navy skippers picked off by a sniper, re-
ported proudly as he withdrew: "The Confederate States gunboat
Cotton is one of the things that were. . . . My men behaved magnifi-
cently. I am recrossing the bay."
As a successful operation — the first of what he intended would
be many — this was unquestionably gratifying to Banks, who made the
most of it in reporting the action to Washington as a follow-up to the
bloodless reoccupation of the Louisiana capital. Yet even as he tendered
his thanks to Weitzel for "the skillful manner in which he has performed
the task confided to him,' , he could also see much that was foreboding
in this small-scale expedition up the Teche. For one thing, the rebels
were very much there, though in what numbers he did not know, and
for another they would fight, but only as it suited them, choosing the
time and place that gave them the best advantage, fading back into the
rank undergrowth quite as mysteriously as they had appeared, and then
moving forward again as the bluecoats withdrew from what Taylor
himself, who knew all its crooks and byways, called "a region of lakes,
bayous, jungle, and bog." How long it might take to clear such an army
of phantoms from the district, or whether indeed it could ever be done,
Banks could not tell. By mid-January, however, he had decided that it
would have to be done. His expectations, described in mid-December
as "most sanguine," were tempered now by prudence and better ac-
quaintance with the peculiar factors involved. He perceived that they
would have to be refashioned to conform to a different schedule be-
fore he attempted the reduction of Port Hudson and the eventual link-up
with Grant in front of Vicksburg, all those devious hundreds of miles up
the tawny Mississippi.
In Northwest Arkansas and South Missouri things were not going
much better for John Schofield, who had risen from a sickbed to resume
command of his army on the morrow of Prairie Grove. They could
in fact be said to be going a good deal worse, so far at least as personal
vexation was concerned. He had won a battle (or anyhow Blunt and
Herron had, with the result that they were about to be promoted over
his head) and had followed it up with a lunge at Van Buren, resulting
in the destruction of Hindman's stores, before withdrawing to Fayette-
ville; but he had no sooner regained the presumed security of this pro-
Union district, where he expected to enjoy in comparative relaxation his
belated but welcome promotion to major general, than he was distracted
by a series of explosions in his rear. First, Hindman unleashed his cavalry
under Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke, a Missouri-born West
Pointer, for an all-out raid on the main Federal supply base at Spring-
field, a hundred miles north of the point where Schofield was in the
[ 140 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
process of drawing his lines facing south. On New Year's Eve Marma-
duke left Lewisburg, on the north bank of the Arkansas River midway
across the state, and reached his objective one week later at the head of
2300 horsemen, many of them picked up along the way and added to the
original brigade of veterans under Colonel J. O. Shelby, who had led
them on every field since Wilson's Creek. Attacking on January 8 the
raiders burned the Springfield depot of supplies and withdrew eastward
45 miles to strike at Hartville on the 1 ith, with similar results after sav-
age fighting, then turned south through a gale of sleet and snow,
gobbling up enemy detachments as they went, and recrossed the White
River at Batesville on January 25.
Casualties in the two main fights had been about 250 on each
side, in addition to which Marmaduke not only had captured and paroled
more than 300 of the enemy in the course of the raid, for the most
part turning them loose in bitter weather without their outer garments
— "In winter," one observer remarked, "the overcoat-bearing Federal
was esteemed especially for his pelt" — but also had destroyed vital re-
serve supplies and refitted his troopers with arms and equipment greatly
superior to the ones they had carried northward. All this came out of
Schofield's pocket, so to speak, but that was by no means the most
painful aftereffect of the operation. Major General Samuel Curtis, pro-
moted to command of the department as a result of his Pea Ridge vic-
tory back in March, took alarm and ordered the Army of the Frontier
withdrawn from Fayetteville to protect the penetrated region across
the state line in its rear, abolishing at a stroke the hard-won gains of
Prairie Grove. Schofield protested, to no avail; Missouri soon had greater
need than ever for on-the-spot protection, Marmaduke's excursion hav-
ing served to bring the guerillas out of hiding and onto the highways,
along which new recruits hastened to join the bands reassembling un-
der such leaders as George Todd, David Pool, William C. Anderson,
called "Bloody Bill," and William C. Quantrill. Enrolling was a simple
process. All a recruit had to do was answer "Yes" to the question: "Will
you follow orders, be true to your fellows, and kill all those who
serve and support the Union?"
In the wake of this sudden activity, in effect not unlike the upset-
ting of a beehive, came violent dissension in the ranks of the Union leaders.
Curtis, a former Iowa Republican congressman and abolitionist, repre-
sented the radical faction, while Schofield, with the support of Governor
Hamilton R. Gamble, became the champion of conservative views. Mili-
tarily, as well, the two generals were divergent in opinion. Curtis wanted
to hold all available troops within the borders of the state in order to
use them in putting down troublemakers of all sorts, armed or un-
armed; Schofield on the other hand believed in taking the offensive
against the Confederates to his front in Arkansas. At length, as the situ-
ation grew more tense between the two, Lincoln was appealed to as ar-
Unhappy New Year [ 141 ]
bitrator. He backed the department commander, ordering Schofield east
of the Mississippi and leaving the hero of Pea Ridge in full control.
However, the storm of protest which followed this decision gave
promise of greater trouble than ever, and caused him to seek a differ-
ent solution. Transferring Curtis out to Kansas, where his political views
would be more in accord with those of the majority of the people,
Lincoln appointed as the new commander of the Department of Mis-
souri old Edwin V. Sumner, lately relieved of duty with the Army of
the Potomac. But this did not work either; Sumner died en route. . . .
It was March 21. Breaking his journey at Syracuse, New York, the old
soldier lay in a coma, as if in belated reaction to the horror of Antietam,
where he had begun to lose the grip that had been strong enough to
save the day at Fair Oaks. "The Second Corps never lost a flag or a
cannon!" he suddenly cried out. When his aide came over he opened
his eyes. "That is true; never lost one," he said weakly. At sixty-six he
was nearing the end of forty-four years of army service, and except for
his long sharp nose he resembled a death's-head. The aide raised him to a
more comfortable position on the bed and poured him a glass of wine,
prescribed by the doctor to keep up his strength. Sumner took a sip,
saying across the rim of the glass by way of a toast: "God save my
country, the United States of America," then dropped the glass and died.
. . . Lincoln, receiving the news of Sumner's death, decided that Scho-
field was probably the best man to take charge in Missouri after all. In
reassigning him to duty there, however, he thought it proper to give
him some advice on how to proceed among people who were engaged in
what he called "a pestilent factional quarrel among themselves." It was,
he said in the accents of Polonius, "a difficult role, and so much greater
will be the honor if you perform it well. If both factions, or neither,
shall abuse you, you will probably be about right. Beware of being
assailed by one and praised by the other."
The trouble with this, as advice, was that it was the counsel of
perfection, since the only way a man could avoid factions, being cham-
pioned on the one hand and excoriated on the other, was to stay out of
Missouri in the first place. Schofield, a rather plump New York West
Pointer who wore a long thin growth of curly whiskers in partial
compensation for the fact that he was already balding at the age of
thirty-two, was quite aware of this, of course, but promised to do his
best in that regard. At the same time, however — it was late spring by
then, well up in May — he had to forgo his plans for an offensive into
Arkansas, not only because of guerilla troubles within his department
(they continued to grow worse as time went by, until at last they ex-
ceeded in horror the wildest nightmares Curtis or anyone else, except
possibly Bill Anderson and Quantrill — not to mention old John Brown
— had ever had) but also because he lacked the troops, Missouri having
become in effect a recruiting ground for the support of operations far
[i 4 2] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
down the big river that laved its eastern flank. Schofield could only-
give what he had promised, his best, and if this was not a great deal, un-
der the nearly impossible circumstances it was enough.
He could take consolation, however, in the fact that the Con-
federates to the south were quite as bedeviled as he himself was, though
in a different way: with the result that throughout this unhappy sea-
son, when so much of military importance was moving inexorably to-
ward a climax on the east flank of the theater, they were no more able to
assume the offensive than Schofield was. Not only were they suffering
from an even more acute shortage of troops, but a sequence of rapid-fire
shifts in command, beginning at the very top, quite paralyzed whatever
movements they might otherwise have undertaken.
Not that the shifts were avoidable. It had in fact already become
apparent that Holmes had been given a good deal more than he could
handle. In mid-January, a week after his return to Richmond from his
western journey, Davis sent for Kirby Smith, whom he admired, and
assigned him to command the newly created Department of West Louisi-
ana and Texas, intending in this way to relieve Holmes of the task of
co-ordinating the efforts of Taylor and Magruder. "Am I thus to be sent
into exile?" Smith asked wistfully. Not yet thirty-nine, he ranked second
among the nation's seven lieutenant generals, and Lee himself had lately
said that he would be pleased to have him as a corps commander, alongside
Longstreet and Jackson. Davis explained that the assignment, far from
amounting to exile, was as important as any in the whole Confederacy,
since his main duty ' 'would be directed to aiding in the defense of the
Lower Mississippi and keeping that great artery of the West effectually
closed to Northern occupation or trade." Acquiescing, Smith set out in
early February, only to learn en route that his command had been en-
larged to include the entire Transmississippi. In the light of this he ar-
ranged with Pemberton for the transfer of Major General Sterling Price,
who was much admired in the Far West and had formerly been gov-
ernor of Missouri, the scene of his early victories at Wilson's Creek and
Lexington. It was hoped that Price would repeat them presently, al-
though a sadly large proportion of the men with whom he had won
them were buried now in shallow graves around Corinth and Iuka, and
the survivors, few as they were in number, were too badly needed
around Vicksburg to be allowed to recross the river. How he would re-
place them Smith did not know, for the region had been stripped of
troops, first by Van Dorn, who had brought them east after his de-
feat at Elkhorn Tavern, and then by Hindman, who, by stringent en-
forcement of the conscription laws, had raised the army which he had
taken across the Boston Mountains and then returned with no more
than a comparative handful. Smith soon found his worst fears confirmed.
"The male population remaining are old men, or have furnished substi-
Unhappy New Year [ 143 ]
tutes," he reported, "are lukewarm, or are wrapped up in speculation
and money-making."
Crossing at Port Hudson, he ascended Red River in a steamboat
Richard Taylor had waiting for him by prearrangement, and on March
7 at Alexandria, Louisiana, he assumed command of all troops west of the
Mississippi. What he encountered first-off gave his Regular Army nature
quite a shock. "There was no general system, no common head," he
later reported; "each district was acting independently." It was neces-
sary, he said, to "begin de novo in any attempt at a general systematizing
and development of the department resources." Accordingly he set out
at once on a preliminary tour of inspection, which only served to in-
crease his first dismay. Conferring with Holmes at Little Rock — the
North Carolinian now had charge of the subdepartment including Ar-
kansas, Missouri, and Indian Territory — he found him anxiously await-
ing the arrival of Price to command the army remnant left by Hind-
man, who had resigned in a huff at having been superseded by Holmes
on the occasion of that officer's step-down from command of the whole
theater. Price arrived before the end of the month, yet there was little
he could do until he got his men in condition to fight, which obviously
would not be soon. Smith meantime established his headquarters at
Shreveport. He considered it "a miserable place with a miserable popula-
tion," but it had the virtue of central location, at the head of navigation
of Red River and on the direct route between Texas and Richmond.
Here he set to work, laying the groundwork for organization of the
enormous region which in time would be known as Kirby-Smithdom.
He worked long hours and did not spare himself or his subordinates; but
spring had come, and so had Banks and Grant, before his command —
which included, in all, about 30,000 soldiers between the Mississippi and
the Rio Grande, fewer even than Bragg had in the Duck River Valley or
Pemberton had at Vicksburg and Port Hudson — was in any condition to
offer them anything more than a token resistance.
After an all-night boat ride down the Mississippi, from Memphis
past the mouth of the Arkansas, Grant reached Napoleon on January
18 to find McClernand, Porter, and Sherman awaiting his arrival with
mixed emotions — mixed, that is, so far as McClernand's were con-
cerned; Porter and Sherman were united, if by nothing more than a mu-
tual and intense dislike of the congressman-turned-commander. To
them, Grant came as something of a savior, since he outranked the ob-
ject of their scorn. To McClernand, on the other hand, he seemed noth-
ing of the sort; McClernand plainly suspected another attempt to steal
his thunder, if not his army. He had enlarged his Arkansas Post exploit
by sending a pair of gunboats up White River to drive the rebels from St
Charles and wreck their installations at De Vails Bluff, terminus of the
[144] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
railroad running east from Little Rock toward Memphis. It was smartly-
done, accomplishing at the latter place the destruction of the depot
and some rolling stock, as well as the capture of two 8-inch guns which
the flustered garrison was trying to load aboard the cars for a getaway
west. Still at Fort Hindman while this was in progress, McClernand re-
ceived Grant's curt and critical letter ordering him back to the Missis-
sippi at once, and he bucked it along to Lincoln with a covering letter
of his own.
"I believe my success here is gall and wormwood to the clique of
West Pointers who have been persecuting me for months," he wrote,
imploring his friend and fellow-townsman not to "let me be clandes-
tinely destroyed, or, what is worse, dishonored, without a hearing." He
asked, "How can General Grant at a distance of 400 miles intelligently
command the army with me?" and answered his own question without a
pause: "He cannot do it. It should be made an independent command, as
both you and the Secretary of War, as I believe, originally intended."
Grant was about to get in some licks of his own in this regard, if
not through out-of-channels access to Lincoln — whom he had not only
never met, but had never even seen, despite the fact that both had gone
to war from Illinois — then at any rate through Halleck, which was the
next-best thing. For the present he merely conferred with the three offi-
cers, collectively and singly, and ordered the return of the whole expedi-
tion to Milliken's Bend for a renewal of the drive on Vicksburg by the
direct route. By now, however, as a result of his talk with these men
who had been there, he was beginning to see that the only successful
approach, after all, might have to be roundabout. "What may be neces-
sary to reduce the place I do not yet know," he wired the general-in-
chief, "but since the late rains [I] think our troops must get below the
city to be used effectually."
He spent the night ashore at Napoleon, whose partial destruction
by incendiaries the day before caused Sherman to declare that he was
"free to admit we all deserve to be killed unless we can produce a state
of discipline when such disgraceful acts cannot be committed unpun-
ished." One solution, he decided, would be "to assess the damages upon
the whole army, officers included," but no such drastic remedy was
adopted. The following morning Grant saw the transports and their es-
cort vessels steam away south, in accordance with his orders, and re-
turned that evening to Memphis. Next day, January 20, he sent Halleck a
long dispatch explaining the tactical situation as he saw it and announc-
ing that, by way of a start, he intended to try his hand at redigging the
canal across the base of the hairpin bend in front of Vicksburg, aban-
doned the previous summer by Butler's men when the two Union fleets
were sundered and repulsed by the rebel warship Arkansas, now for-
tunately at the bottom of the river. Grant suggested that, in view of the
importance of the campaign he was about to undertake, it would be wise
Unhappy New Year [ 145 ]
to combine the four western departments, now under Banks, Curtis,
Rosecrans, and himself, under a single over-all commander in order to
assure co-operation. "As I am the senior department commander in the
West," he wrote — apparently unaware that Banks was nine months his
senior and in point of fact had been a major general before Grant himself
was even a brigadier — "I will state that I have no desire whatever for
such combined command, but would prefer the command I now have
to any other than can be given." From which disclaimer he passed at
once to the subject of John McClernand: "I regard it as my duty to
state that I found there was not sufficient confidence felt in General Mc-
Clernand as a commander, either by the Army or Navy, to insure him
success. Of course, all would co-operate to the best of their ability, but
still with a distrust. This is a matter I made no inquiries about, but it
was thrust upon me." (As a later observer pointed out, there was "a
touch of artfulness" in this; Grant "elevated Sherman and Porter to
speak for entire branches of the service, then sought audiences with them
so that the issue might be forced upon him!") However, he continued,
"as it is my intention to command in person, unless otherwise directed,
there is no special necessity of mentioning this matter; but I want you to
know that others besides myself agree in the necessity of the course I
had already determined upon pursuing."
His belief that Old Brains was on his side was strengthened the
following day by a quick reply to his suggestion that "both banks of the
Mississippi should be under one command, at least during the present
operations." "The President has directed that so much of Arkansas as
you may desire to control be temporarily attached to your department,"
Halleck wired. "This will give you control of both banks of the river."
Pleased to learn of Lincoln's support, even at second hand, Grant kept
busy with administrative and logistical matters preparatory to his de-
parture from Memphis at the earliest possible date. McPherson was
marching in from LaGrange with two divisions to accompany him down-
river; these 14,979, added to the 32,015 already there, would give him an
"aggregate present" of 46,994 in the vicinity of Vicksburg, with more
to follow, not only from his own Department of the Tennessee, which
included a grand total of 93,816 of all arms, but also from the Depart-
ment of Missouri, now under Curtis and later under Schofield. On Jan-
uary 25 he received further evidence of Lincoln's interest in the campaign
for control of the Lower Mississippi, whose whimsical habit of carving
itself new channels the Chief Executive knew from having made two
flatboat voyages down it to New Orleans as a youth. "Direct your atten-
tion particularly to the canal proposed across the point," Halleck urged.
"The President attaches much importance to this."
Grant himself was about ready to embark by now, wiring the
general-in-chief this same day: "I leave for the fleet . . . tomorrow."
Last-minute details held him up an extra day, but on the 27 th he was
[146] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
off. "The work of reducing Vicksburg will take time and men," he had
told Halleck the week before, "but can be accomplished."
Sherman was already hard at work on the project which had
drawn Lincoln's particular attention, and with his present arduous en-
deavor — in effect a gigantic wrestling match with Mother Nature her-
self, or at any rate with her son the Father of Waters — added to his
previous bloody experience up the Yazoo, he could testify as to the va-
lidity of Grant's long-range observation that the conquest of Vicksburg
would "take time and men." In fact, he was inclined to think it might
require so much of both commodities as to prove impossible. Both were
expendable in the ordinary sense, but after all there were limits. He was
discouraged, he wrote his senator brother John this week, by the lack
of substantial progress by Union arms, East and West, and by the unex-
pected resilience of the Confederates, civilian as well as military: "Two
years have passed and the rebel flag still haunts our nation's capital.
Our armies enter the best rebel territory and the wave closes in behind.
The utmost we can claim is that our enemy respects our power to do
them physical harm more than they did at first; but as to loving us any
more, it were idle even to claim it. ... I still see no end," he added,
"or even the beginning of the end."
Perhaps the senseless burning of Napoleon the week before was
on his mind or conscience, but the truth was he had enough on his hands
to distress him here and now. The rain continued to come down hard
— even harder, perhaps, than it was falling along the Rappahannock,
where Burnside's Mud March was coming to its sticky close and the
soldiers were composing a parody of a bedtime prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep
In mud that's many fathoms deep.
If Vm not here when you awake
Just hunt me up with an oyster rake
— with the result that Sherman's men, in addition to having to widen and
deepen the old canal, which was little more than a narrow ditch across
the base of the low-lying tongue of land, had to work day and night at
throwing up a levee along its right flank in order not to be washed
away by water from the flooded bayous in their rear. Besides, even if
the river could be persuaded to scour out a new channel along this line
and thus "leave Vicksburg out in the cold," as Sherman said, it would be
no great gain so far as he could see. The Confederates would merely shift
their guns southward along the bluff to command the river at and below
the outlet, leaving the shovel-weary Federals no better off than before.
So he told his brother. And Porter, watching his red-haired friend slosh
around in the mud and lose his temper a dozen times a day — "half
Unhappy New Year [ 147 ]
sailor, half soldier, with a touch of the snapping turtle," he called
him — once more found it necessary to bolster Sherman's spirits with
hot rum and rollicking words. "If this rain lasts much longer we will not
need a canal," he ended a note to the unhappy general on January 27. "I
think the whole point will disappear, troops and all, in which case the
gunboats will have the field to themselves."
Next day, however, Grant arrived, and Porter, reporting the fact
to Welles, could say: "I hope for a better state of things."
X 3 X
The word shoddy was comparatively new, having originated during the
present century in Yorkshire, where it was used in reference to almost
worthless quarry stone or nearly unburnable coal. Crossing the ocean to
America it took on other meanings, at first being used specifically to
designate an inferior woolen yarn made from fibers taken from worn-
out fabrics and reprocessed, then later as the name for the resultant
cloth itself. "Poor sleezy stuff," one of Horace Greeley's Tribune re-
porters called it, "woven open enough for sieves, and then filled with
shearmen's dust," while Harper's Weekly used even harsher words in
referring to it as "a villainous compound, the refuse and sweepings of
the shop, pounded, rolled, glued, and smoothed to the external form
and gloss of cloth, but no more like the genuine article than the shadow
is to the substance." Thoroughly indignant, the magazine went on to
tell how "soldiers, on the first day's march or in the earliest storm, found
their clothes, overcoats, and blankets scattering to the wind in rags or
dissolving into their primitive elements of dust under the pelting rain."
It followed that the merchants and manufacturers who supplied
the government with such cloth became suddenly and fantastically
rich in the course of their scramble for contracts alongside others of their
kind, the purveyors of tainted beef and weevily grain, the sellers of card-
board haversacks and leaky tents. No one was really discomforted by all
this — so far, at least, as they could see — except the soldiers, the Union
volunteers whose sufferings under bungling leaders in battles such as
Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bluffs were of a nature that made their
flop-soled shoes and tattered garments seem relatively unimportant, and
the Confederate jackals who stripped the blue-clad corpses after the in-
evitable retreat. If the generals were unashamed, were hailed in fact as
heroes after such fiascos, why should anyone else have pangs of con-
science? The contractors asked that, meanwhile raking in profits that
were as long as they were quick. The only drawback was the money
itself, which was in some ways no more real than the sleazy cloth or the
imitation leather, being itself the shadow of what had formerly been sub-
stance. With prosperity in full swing and gold rising steadily, paper
[148] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
money declined from day to day, sometimes taking sickening drops as
it passed from hand to hand. All it seemed good for was spending, and
they spent it. Spending, they rose swiftly in the social scale, creating in
the process a society which drew upon itself the word that formerly
had been used to describe the goods they bartered — "shoddy" — and
upon their heads the scorn of those who had made their money earlier
and resented the fact that it was being debased. One such was Amos
Lawrence, a millionaire Boston merchant. "Cheap money makes specu-
lation, rising prices, and rapid fortunes," Lawrence declared, "but it
will not make patriots." He wanted hard times back again. Closed fac-
tories would turn men's minds away from gain; then and only then
could the war be won. So he believed. "We must have Sunday all over
the land," he said, "instead of feasting and gambling."
For the present, though, all that was Sunday about the leaders
of the trend which he deplored was their clothes. They wore on week-
days now the suits they once had reserved for wear to church, and as
they prospered they bought others, fine broadcloth with nothing shoddy
about them except possibly what they inclosed. So garbed, and still
with money to burn before it declined still further, the feasters and
gamblers acquired new habits and pretensions, with the result that the
disparaging word was attached by the New York World not only to the
new society, but also to the age in which it flourished:
The lavish profusion in which the old southern cotton aristocracy
used to indulge is completely eclipsed by the dash, parade, and mag-
nificence of the new northern shoddy aristocracy of this period. Ideas
of cheapness and economy are thrown to the winds. The individual
who makes the most money — no matter how — and spends the most
money — no matter for what — is considered the greatest man. To
be extravagant is to be fashionable. These facts sufficiently account
for the immense and brilliant audiences at the opera and the theatres,
and until the final crash comes such audiences undoubtedly will con-
tinue. The world has seen its iron age, its silver age, its golden age,
and its brazen age. This is the age of shoddy.
The new brown-stone palaces on Fifth Avenue, the new equipages
at the Park, the new diamonds which dazzle unaccustomed eyes, the
new silks and satins which rustle overloudly, as if to demand atten-
tion, the new people who live in the palaces, and ride in the carriages,
and wear the diamonds and silks — all are shoddy. . . . They set or
follow the shoddy fashions, and fondly imagine themselves a la mode
de Paris, when they are only a la mode de shoddy. They are shoddy
brokers on Wall Street, or shoddy manufacturers of shoddy goods,
or shoddy contractors for shoddy articles for a shoddy government.
Six days in the week they are shoddy business men. On the seventh
day they are shoddy Christians.
Unhappy New Year [ 149 ]
Nor were journalists and previously wealthy men the only ones
to express a growing indignation. Wages had not risen in step with the
rising cost of food and rent and other necessities of life, and this had
brought on a growth of the trade-union movement, with mass meet-
ings held in cities throughout the North to protest the unequal dis-
tribution of advantages and hardships. (Karl Marx was even now at
work on Das Kapital in London's British Museum, having issued with
Friedrich Engels The Com?nunist Manifesto fifteen years ago, and Lin-
coln himself had said in his first December message to Congress: "Labor
is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the
superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.") One
such meeting, held about this time at Cooper Union, filled the building to
capacity while hundreds of people waited outside for word to be
passed of what was being said within by delegates on the rostrum;
whatever it was was being received with cheers and loud applause, along
with a sprinkling of hisses and vehement boos. A representative of the
hatters, one McDonough Bucklin, believed that the war was being used
by the rich as an excuse for increased exploitation of the poor. As Buck-
lin put it, "The machinery is forging fetters to bind you in perpetual
bondage. It gives you a distracted country with men crying out loud and
strong for the Union. Union with them means no more nor less than that
they want the war prolonged that they may get the whole of the capi-
tal of the country into their breeches pocket and let it out at a percentage
that will rivet the chain about your neck." It was the old story:
"Every day the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer." Apparently at
this point Bucklin got carried away, for a World reporter noted that
"the speaker made some concluding remarks strongly tainted with
communism, which did not meet with general approval."
And yet, for all the offense to the sensibilities of the Boston mil-
lionaire, who had made his pile in a different time, as well as to those of
the New York journalist, whose indignation was one of the tools he
used in earning a living, and the labor delegate, who after all was mainly
concerned with the fact that he and his hatters were not getting what
he considered a large fair slice of the general pie, much of the undoubted
ugliness of the era — the Age of Shoddy, if you will — was little more
than the manifest awkwardness of national adolescence, a reaction to
growing pains. Unquestionably the growth was there, and unquestion-
ably, too — despite the prevalent gaucherie, the scarcity of grace and
graciousness, the apparent concern with money and money alone, getting
and spending — much of the growth was solid and even permanent. The
signs were at hand for everyone to read. "Old King Cotton's dead and
buried; brave young Corn is king," was the refrain of a popular song
written to celebrate the bumper grain crops being gathered every fall,
f 150 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
of which the ample surpluses were shipped to Europe, where a coinci-
dental succession of drouths — as if the guns booming and growling be-
yond the Atlantic had drawn the rain clouds, magnet-like, and then dis-
charged them empty — resulted in poor harvests which otherwise would
have signaled the return of Old World famine. More than five million
quarters of wheat and flour were exported to England in 1862, whereas
the total in 1859 had been less than a hundred thousand. In the course of
the conflict the annual pork pack nearly doubled in the northern states,
and the wool clip more than tripled. Meanwhile, industry not only kept
pace with agriculture, it outran it. In Philadelphia alone, 180 new fac-
tories were established between 1862 and 1864 to accommodate labor-
saving devices which had been invented on the eve of war but which now
came into their own in response to the accelerated demands of the boom
economy of wartime: the Howe sewing machine, for example, which
revolutionized the garment industry, and the Gordon McKay machine
for stitching bootsoles to uppers, producing one hundred pairs of shoes in
the time previously required to finish a single pair by hand. All those
humming wheels and clamorous drive-shafts needed oil; and got it, too,
despite the fact that no such amounts as were now required had
even existed before, so far at least as men had suspected a short while
back; for within that same brief three-year span the production of pe-
troleum, discovered in Pennsylvania less than two years before Sumter,
increased from 84,000 to 128,000,000 gallons. The North was fighting
the South with one hand and getting rich with the other behind its back,
though which was left and which was right was hard to say. In any
case, with such profits and progress involved, who could oppose the
trend except a comparative handful of men and women, maimed or
widowed or otherwise made squeamish, if not downright unpatriotic,
by hard luck or oversubscription to Christian ethics?
A change was coming upon the land, and upon the land's in-
habitants; nor was the change merely a dollars-and-cents affair, as
likely to pass as to last. Legislation which had long hung fire because of
peacetime caution and restraints imposed by jealous Southerners, now
departed, came out of the congressional machine about as fast as propo-
nents could feed bills into the hopper. Kansas had become a state and
Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada were organized as Territories before
the war was one year old, with the result that no part of the national area
remained beyond the scope of the national law. Wherever a man went
now the law went with him, at least in theory, and this also had its ef-
fect. Helping to make room on the eastern seaboard for the nearly
800,000 immigrants who arrived in the course of the conflict — espe-
cially from Ireland and Germany, where recruiting agents were hard at
work, helping certain northern states to fill their quotas — no less
than 300,000 people crossed the prairies, headed west for Pike's Peak or
California, Oregon or the new Territories, some in search of gold as in
Unhappy New Year [ 151 ]
the days of '49 and others to farm the cornlands made available under
the Homestead Act of 1862, whereby a settler could stake off a claim to a
quarter-section of public land and, upon payment of a nominal fee, call
those 160 acres his own; 15,000 such homesteads were settled thus in the
course of the war, mostly in Minnesota, amounting in all to some 2,500,-
000 acres. In this way the development of the Far West continued,
despite the distraction southward, while back East the cities grew in
wealth and population, despite the double drain in both directions. Nor
were the cultural pursuits neglected, and these included more than at-
tendance of the opera as a chance to show off the silks and satins
whose rustling had disturbed the World reporter. Not only did univer-
sity enrollments not decline much below what could be accounted for by
the departure of southern students, but while the older schools were ex-
panding their facilities with the aid of numerous wartime bequests,
fifteen new institutions of higher learning were founded, including Cor-
nell and Swarthmore, Vassar and the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy. Campus life was not greatly different as a whole, once the under-
graduates and professors grew accustomed to the fact that armies were
locked in battle from time to time at various distances off beyond the
southern horizon. Interrupted in 1861, for example, the Harvard-Yale
boat races were resumed three years later in the midst of the bloodiest
season of the war, and not a member of either crew volunteered for
service in the army or the navy.
The draft, passed in early January as if in solution of the prob-
lem of Fredericksburg losses, hardly affected anyone not willing to be
affected or else so miserably poor in these high times as not to be able
to scrape up the $300 exemption fee as often as his name or number
came up at the periodic drawings, in which case it might be said that he
was about as well off in the army as out of it, except for the added dis-
comfort of being drilled and possibly shot at. Large numbers of men
from the upper classes, whether recently arrived at that level or estab-
lished there of old, went to the expense of hiring substitutes (usually
immigrants who were brought over by companies newly formed to
supply the demand, trafficking thus in flesh to an extent unknown since
the stoppage of the slave trade, and who were glad of the chance to earn
a nest tgg, which included the money they got from the men whose
substitutes they were, plus the bounty paid by that particular state to
volunteers — minus, of course, the fee that went to the company agent
who had got them this opportunity in the first place) not only because
it meant that the substitute-hirer was done with the problem of the
draft for the duration, but also because it was considered more patriotic.
All the same, the parody We Are Coming, Father Abraham :, Three
Hundred Dollars More was greeted with laughter wherever it was
heard; for there was no stigma attached to the man who stayed out of
combat, however he went about it short of actual dodging or desertion.
[152] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
"In the vast new army of 300,000 which Mr Lincoln has ordered to
be raised," one editor wrote, marveling at this gap disclosed in the
new prosperity, "there will not be one man able to pay $300. Not one!
Think of that!"
Washington itself was riding the crest of the wave thrown up by
the boom, its ante-bellum population of 60,000 having nearly quadru-
pled under pressure from the throng of men and women rushing in to
fill the partial vacuum created by the departure of the Southerners
who formerly had set the social tone. Here the growing pains were the
worst of all, according to Lincoln's young secretary John Hay, who
wrote: "This miserable sprawling village imagines itself a city because it
is wicked, as a boy thinks he is a man when he smokes and swears." In
this instance Hay was offended because he and the President, riding
back from the Soldiers Home after an interesting talk on philology —
for which, he said, Lincoln had "a little indulged inclination" — en-
countered "a party of drunken gamblers and harlots returning in the
twilight from [erased]." The fact was, the carousers might have been
returning from almost any quarter of the city; for the provost marshal,
while unable to give even a rough estimate of the number of houses of
prostitution doing business here beside the Potomac, reported 163 gam-
bling establishments in full swing, including one in which a congress-
man had lately achieved fame by breaking the bank in a single night and
leaving with $100,000 bulging his pockets. It was a clutch-and-grab
society now, with a clutch-and-grab way of doing business, whether its
own or the government's, though it still affected a free and easy manner
out of office hours. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in town for a look-round,
found that the nation's pulse could be taken better at Willard's Hotel,
especially in the bar, than at either the Capitol or the White House.
"Everybody may be seen there," he declared. "You exchange nods with
governors of sovereign states; you elbow illustrious men, and tread on
the toes of generals; you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their
familiar tones. You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire pullers, in-
ventors, artists, poets, editors, army correspondents, attaches of foreign
journals, long-winded talkers, clerks, diplomats, mail contractors, rail-
way directors, until your own identity is lost among them. You adopt
the universal habit of the place, and call for a mint julep, a whiskey skin,
a gin cocktail, a brandy smash, or a glass of pure Old Rye; at any hour
all these drinks are in request."
Not that there were no evidences of war aside from the uni-
forms, which were everywhere, and the personal experience of wounds
or bereavement. There were indeed. War was the central fact around
which life in Washington revolved, and what was more there were
constant reminders that war was closely involved with death in its
more unattractive forms. Although men with wrecked faces and empty
sleeves or trouser-legs no longer drew the attention they once had
Unhappy New Year [153]
drawn, other signs were not so easily ignored. Under huge transparen-
cies boasting their skill at embalming, undertakers would buttonhole you
on the street and urgently guarantee that, after receiving payment in
advance, they would bring you back from the place where you caught
the bullet "as lifelike as if you were asleep," the price being scaled in
accordance with your preference for rosewood, pine, or something in
between. One section of the city ticked like an oversized clock as the
coffinmakers plied their hammers, stocking their shops against the day of
battle, the news of which would empty their storerooms overnight and
step up the tempo of their hammers in response to the law of supply
and demand, as if time itself were hurrying to keep pace with the rush of
events. In the small hours of the night, when this cacophonous ticking
was stilled, men might toss sleepless on their beds, with dread like a
presence in the room and sweat breaking out on the palms and fore-
heads even of those who knew the horror only by hearsay; but the out-
ward show, by daylight or lamplight, was garish. Pennsylvania Avenue
was crowded diurnally, to and beyond its margins of alternate dust and
mud, and the plumes and sashes of the blue-clad officers, setting off the
occasional gaudy splash of a Zouave, gave it the look of a carnival mid-
way. This impression was heightened by the hawkers of roasted chest-
nuts and rock candy, and the women also did their part, contributing
to the over-all effect the variegated dresses and tall hats that had come
into fashion lately, the latter burdened about their incongruously nar-
row brims "with over-hanging balconies of flowers."
A future historian described them so, finding also in the course of
her researches that the ladies "were wearing much red that season."
Magenta and Solferino were two of the shades; "warm, bright, amusing
names," she called them, derived from far-off battlefields "where alien
men had died for some vague cause." Search as she might, however, she
could find no shade of red identified with Chickasaw Bluffs, and it was
her opinion that the flightiest trollop on the Avenue would have shrunk
from wearing a scarlet dress that took its name from Fredericksburg.
Across the Atlantic, unfortunately for Confederate hopes of of-
ficial acceptance into the family of nations, the Schleswig-Holstein
problem, unrest in Poland, and the rivalry of Austria and Prussia gave
the ministries of Europe a great deal more to think about than the in-
tricacies of what was called "the American question." Aware that any
disturbance of the precarious balance of power might be the signal for
a general conflagration, they recalled Voltaire's comment that a torch
lighted in 1756 in the forests of the new world had promptly
wrapped the old world in flames. Russia, by coincidence having eman-
cipated her serfs in the same year the western conflict began, was pro-
Union from the start, while France remained in general sympathetic to
[154] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
the South; but neither could act without England, and England could
not or would not intervene, being herself divided on the matter. The
result, aside from occasional fumbling and inopportune attempts at me-
diation — mostly on the part of Napoleon III, who had needs and ambi-
tions private and particular to himself — was that Europe, in effect,
maintained a hands-off policy with regard to the blood now being shed
beyond the ocean.
The double repulse, at Sharpsburg and Perryville, of the one
Confederate attempt (so far) to conquer a peace by invasion of the
North did not mean to Lord Palmerston and his ministers that the
South would necessarily lose the war; far from it. But it did convince
these gentlemen that the time was by no means ripe for intervention, as
they had recently supposed, and was the basis for their mid-November
rejection of a proposal by Napoleon that England, France, and Russia
join in urging a North-South armistice, accompanied by a six-month
lifting of the blockade. The result, if they had agreed — as they had
been warned in no uncertain terms by Seward in private conversations
with British representatives overseas — would have been an immediate
diplomatic rupture, if not an outright declaration of war: in which
connection the London Times remarked that "it would be cheaper to
keep all Lancashire in turtle and venison than to plunge into a desperate
war with the Northern States of America, even with all Europe at our
back." No one knew better than Palmerston the calamity that might en-
sue, for he had been Minister at War from 18 12 to 18 15, during which
period Yankee privateers had sunk about 2500 English ships, almost the
entire marine. At that rate, with all those international tigers crouched
for a leap in case the head tiger suffered some crippling injury, England
not only could not afford to risk the loss of a sideline war; she could
not even afford to win one.
Besides, desirable though it was that the flow of American cotton
to British spindles be resumed — of 534,000 operatives, less than a quar-
ter were working full time and more than half were out of work en-
tirely; including their dependents, and those of other workers who lost
their jobs in ancillary industries, approximately two million people
were without means of self-support as a result of the cotton famine —
the over-all economic picture was far from gloomy. In addition to the
obvious example of the munitions manufacturers, who were profiting
handsomely from the quarrel across the way, the linen and woolen in-
dustries had gained an appreciable part of what the cotton industry had
lost, and the British merchant marine, whose principal rival for world
trade was being chased from the high seas by rebel cruisers, was prosper-
ing as never before, augmented by more than seven hundred Ameri-
can vessels which transferred to the Union Jack in an attempt to avoid
capture or destruction. And though there were those who favored in-
tervention on the side of the South as a means of disposing permanently
Unhappy New Year [ 155 ]
of a growing competitor, if by no other way then by assisting him to cut
himself in two — the poet Matthew Arnold took this line of reason
even further, speaking of the need "to prevent the English people from
becoming, with the growth of democracy, Americanized" — the major-
ity, even among the hard-pressed cotton operatives, did not. The Eman-
cipation Proclamation saw to that, and Lincoln, having won what he
first had feared was a gamble, was quick to press the advantage he
had gained. When the workingmen of Manchester, the city hardest
hit by the cotton famine, sent him an address approved at a meeting held
on New Year's Eve, announcing their support of the North in its ef-
forts to "strike off the fetters of the slave," Lincoln replied promptly in
mid-January, pulling out all the stops in his conclusion: "I know and
deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at Manchester and
in all Europe are called upon to endure in this crisis. . . . Under these
circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterance upon the
question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been
surpassed in any age or in any country. It is, indeed, an energetic and
reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth and of the ultimate
and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not
doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your
great nation, and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you
that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feel-
ings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of
sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen,
whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace
and friendship which now exist between the two nations will be, as it
shall be my desire to make them, perpetual. ,,
Palmerston could have made little headway against the current
of this rhetoric, even if he had so desired. In point of fact he did not
try. Having resisted up to now the efforts of Confederate envoys to
rush him off his feet — which they had done their best to do, knowing
that it was their best chance to secure European intervention: aside, that
is, from such happy accidents as the Trent affair, which unfortunately
after a great deal of furor had come to nothing — he would have
little trouble in keeping his balance from now on. Napoleon, across the
Channel, was another matter. Practically without popular objection to
restrain him, he continued to work in favor of those interests which, as
he saw them, coincided with his own. Through the prominent Paris
banking firm, Erlanger et Cie — whose president's son had lately mar-
ried Matilda Slidell, daughter of the Confederate commissioner — a
multi-million-dollar loan to the struggling young nation across the
Atlantic was arranged, not in answer to any plea for financial assistance
(it had not occurred to the Southerners, including John Slidell, despite
the recent matrimonial connection, that asking would result in anything
more than a Gallic shrug of regret) but purely as a gesture of good
[156] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
will. So the firm's representatives said as they broached the subject to
Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin in Richmond, having crossed the
ocean for that purpose. However, being bankers — and what is more,
French bankers — they added that they saw no harm in combining
the good-will gesture with the chance to turn a profit, not only for the
prospective buyers of the bonds that would be issued, but also for
Erlanger et Cie. Then came the explanation, which showed that the
transaction, though ostensibly a loan, was in fact little more than a
scheme for large-scale speculation in cotton. Each 8% bond, which the
firm would obtain at 70 for sale at approximately 100, was to be made
exchangeable at face value, not later than six months after the end of
the war, for New Orleans middling cotton at 12^ a pound. There was
the catch; for cotton was worth twice that much already, and was still
rising. Benjamin, who was quite as sharp as the visiting bankers or their
chief — Erlanger was a Jew and so was he; Erlanger was a French-
man and so was he, after a manner of speaking, being Creole by adop-
tion — saw through the scheme at once, as indeed anyone but a blind
man would have done; but he also saw its propaganda value, which
amounted at least to financial recognition of the Confederacy as a
member of the family of nations. After certain adjustments on which
he insisted, though not without exposing himself to charges of ingrati-
tude for having looked a gift horse in the mouth — the original offer of
$25,000,000 was scaled down to $15,000,000 and the interest rate to 7%,
while the price at which the firm was to secure the bonds was raised to
77 — the deal was closed.
That was in late January, and at first all went well. Issued in early
March at 90 — which gave Erlanger a spread of 13 points, plus a 5%
commission on all sales — the bonds were enthusiastically oversub-
scribed and quickly arose to 95%. But that was the peak. Before the
month was out they began to fall, and they kept falling, partly because
of the influence of U.S. foreign agents who, basing their charge on the
fact that Jefferson Davis himself had been a prewar advocate of the re-
pudiation of Mississippi state bonds, predicted vociferously that the
Southerners, if by some outside chance they won the war, would cel-
ebrate their victory by repudiating their debts. This had its effect. As the
price declined, the alarmed Parisian bankers brought pressure on James
M. Mason, the Confederate commissioner in London, to bull the market
by using the receipts of the first installment for the purchase of his gov-
ernment's own bonds. Reluctantly, with the agreement of Slidell, he
consented and, before he was through, put $6,000,000 into the attempt.
But even this caused no more than a hesitation. When the artificial
respiration stopped, the decline resumed, eventually pausing of its own
accord at a depth of 36 before the bonds went off the board entirely.
By that time, however, Erlanger et Cie was well in the clear, with a
Unhappy New Year [ 157 ]
profit of about $2,500,000: which was more than the Confederacy ob-
tained in all from a bond issue for which it had pledged six times that
amount in capital and 7% in interest. The real losers, though, were the
individual purchasers, mostly British admirers of the Confederacy, who
left to their descendants the worthless scroll-worked souvenirs of a curi-
ous chapter in international finance.
As a fund-raising device the experiment was nearly a total failure
— for the Confederates, that is, if not for the French bankers — but it
did provide an additional incentive for Napoleon, who had taken con-
siderable interest in the transaction, to hope for a southern victory.
On February 3, after the bond issue had been authorized but before it
had begun, the Emperor had his minister at Washington, Henri Mercier
by name, present an offer of mediation, suggesting that representatives
of the North and South meet on neutral soil for a discussion of terms
of peace. The reaction to this was immediate and negative, at least on
the part of the North. Seward replied that the Federal government had
not the slightest notion of abandoning its efforts to save the Union, and
certainly not by any such relinquishment of authority as the French
proposal seemed to imply. This was seconded emphatically by Congress
on March 3, when both houses issued a joint resolution denouncing
mediation as "foreign interference" and reaffirming their "unaltera-
ble purpose" to suppress a rebellion which had for its object the tearing
of the fabric of the finest government the world had ever known. In
short, all that came of this latest effort by Napoleon to befriend the
South was a further reduction of his possible influence. And Palmerston,
watching the outcome from across the Channel, was more than ever
convinced that no good could proceed from any such machinations.
Dependent as his people were on U.S. grain to keep them from starva-
tion, with Canada liable to seizure as a hostage to fortune and the British
merchant marine exposed to being crippled if not destroyed, it seemed to
him little short of madness to step into an argument which was after all a
family affair. "Those who in quarrels interpose, Are apt to get a bloody
nose," he intoned, falling back on doggerel to express his fears.
A. Dudley Mann, third in the trio of Confederate commissioners
in Europe, had opened the year by complaining to his government that
"the conduct of [England and France] toward us has been extremely
shabby" and deploring their lack of spirit in the face of "the arrogant
pretensions of the insolent Washington concern." Now in mid-March,
as the third spring of the war began its green advance across the embat-
tled South, all those thousands of miles away, Slidell in Paris was be-
coming increasingly impatient with Napoleon, whose avowed good
will and favors never seemed to lead to anything valid or substantial,
and Mason in London was lamenting bitterly that he had "no inter-
course, unofficial or otherwise, with any member of the [British] Gov-
[158] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
ernment." It was his private opinion, expressed frequently to Benjamin
these days, that instead of continuing to put up with snubs and rebuffs,
he would do better to come home.
If he had come home to Virginia now — as he did not; not yet —
he would have done well to brace himself for the shock of finding it con-
siderably altered from what it had been when he left it, a year and a half
ago, to begin his aborted voyage on the Trent. That was perhaps the
greatest paradox of all: that the Confederacy, in launching a revolution
against change, should experience under pressure of the war which then
ensued an even greater transformation, at any rate of the manner in
which its citizens pursued their daily rounds, than did the nation it ac-
cused of trying to foist upon it an unwanted metamorphosis, not only
of its cherished institutions, but also of its very way of life.
That way of life was going fast, and some there were, particu-
laily among those who could remember a time when a society was
judged in accordance with its sense of leisure, who affirmed that it was
gone already. Nowhere was the change more obvious than in Rich-
mond. Though the city was no longer even semi-beleaguered, as it had
been in the time of McClellan, the outer fortifications had been
lengthened and strengthened to such an extent that wags were saying,
"They ought to be called fiftyfications now." Within that earthwork
girdle, where home-guard clerks from government offices walked their
appointed posts in their off hours, an ante-bellum population of less than
40,000 had mushroomed to an estimated 140,000, exclusive of the Union
captives and Confederate wounded who jammed the old tobacco ware-
houses converted to prisons and hospitals. Yet the discomfort to which
the older residents objected was not so much the result of the quantity of
these late arrivers as it was of their quality, so to speak, or lack of it.
"Virginians regarded the newcomers much as Romans would regard
the First Families of the Visigoths," a diarist wrote. In truth, they had
provocation far beyond the normal offense to their normal snobbery.
Tenderloin districts such as Locust Alley, where painted women helped
furloughed men forget the rigors of the field, and Johnny Worsham's
gambling hell, directly across from the State House itself, had given the
Old Dominion capital a reputation for being "the most corrupt and li-
centious city south of the Potomac." A Charlestonian administered the
unkindest cut, however, by writing home that he had come to Richmond
and found an entirely new city erected "after the model of Sodom and
New York." According to another observer, an Englishman with a
sharper ear for slang and a greater capacity for shock, the formerly
decorous streets were crowded now with types quaintly designated as
pug-uglies, dead rabbits, shoulder-hitters, "and a hundred other classes
of villains for whom the hangman has sighed for many a long year."
Unhappy New Year [159]
Richmond saw and duly shuddered; but there was grimmer
cause for shuddering than the wrench given its sense of propriety by
the whores and gamblers who had taken up residence within its gates. As
new-mounded graves spread over hillsides where none had been before,
the population of the dead kept pace with the fast-growing population
of the living. Though the Confederates in general lost fewer men in
battle than their opponents, the fact that they had fewer to lose gave
the casualty lists a greater impact, and it was remarked that "funerals
were so many, even the funerals of friends, that none could be more than
sparsely attended." Even more pitiful were the dying; Richmonders
had come to know what one of them called "the peculiar chant of pain"
that went up from a line of springless wagons hauling wounded over a
rutted road or a cobbled street. You saw the maimed wherever you
looked. For the city's hospitals — including the one on Chimborazo
Heights, which had 150 buildings and was said to be the largest in the
world — were so congested during periods immediately following bat-
tles that men who had lost an arm three days before had to be turned
out, white-faced and trembling from shock and loss of blood, to make
room for others in more urgent need of medical attention. It was up to
the people to take them into their houses for warmth and food, and this
they did, though only by the hardest, for both were dear and getting
further beyond their means with every day that passed.
A gold dollar now was worth four in Confederate money, and
even a despised $1 Yankee greenback brought $2.50 in a swap. Of coined
money there was none, and in fact there had never been any, except for
four half-dollars struck in the New Orleans mint before the fall of that
city caused the government to abandon its plans for coinage. Congress's
first solution to the small-change problem had been to make U.S. silver
coins legal tender up to $10, along with English sovereigns, French
napoleons, and Spanish and Mexican doubloons, but presently a flood of
paper money was released upon the country, bills of smaller denomina-
tions being known as "shinplasters" because a soldier once had used a
fistful to cover a tibia wound. Sometimes, as depreciation continued,
that seemed about all they were good for. A War Department official,
comparing current with prewar household expenses — flour, then $7,
now $28 a barrel; bacon, then 20^, now $1.25 a pound; firewood, then
$3 or $4, now {15 a cord — found, as many others were finding, that he
could not make ends meet; "My salary of $3000 will go about as far as
$700 would in i860." Wool and salt, drugs and medicines, nails and
needles were scarcely to be had at any price, though the last were often
salvaged from sewing kits found in the pockets of dead Federals. Dress
muslin was $6 to $8 a yard, calico $1.75, coal $14 a cartload, and dinner
in a first-class hotel ran as high as $25 a plate. In addition to genuine
shortages, others were artificial, the result of transportation problems.
Items that were plenteous in one part of the country might be as rare as
[160] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
hen's teeth in another. Peaches selling for 25^ a dozen in Charleston,
for instance, cost ten, fifteen, even twenty cents apiece in Richmond
nowadays. For men perhaps the worst shock was the rising price of
whiskey. As low as 25^ a gallon in 1861, inferior stuff known variously
as bust-head, red-eye, and tangle-foot now sold for as high as $35 a gal-
lon. For women, on the other hand, the main source of incidental dis-
tress was clothes, the lack of new ones and the unsuitability of old ones
through wear-and-tear and changing styles, although the latter were of
necessity kept to a minimum. "Do you realize the fact that we shall soon
be without a stitch of clothes?" a young woman wrote to a friend in
early January. "There is not a bonnet for sale in Richmond. Some of the
girls smuggle them, which I for one consider in the worst possible taste."
Apparently ashamed to have let her mind turn in this direction at this
time, she hastened to apologize for her flightiness, only to fall into fresh
despair. "It seems rather volatile to discuss such things while our dear
country is in such peril. Heaven knows I would costume myself in
coffee-bags if that would help, but having no coffee, where would I get
the bags?"
One provident source of amusement and delivery from care was
the theater, which was popular as never before, though it did not es-
cape the censure of the more respectable. "The thing took well, and
money flowed into the treasury," a manager afterwards recalled, "but
often had I cause to upbraid myself for having fallen so low in my own
estimation, for I had always considered myself a gentleman, and I found
that in taking control of this theatre and its vagabond company I had
forfeited my claim to a respectable stand in the ranks of Society." A
prominent Baptist preacher's complaint from his pulpit that "twenty
gentlemen for the chorus and the ballet" might be more useful to their
country in the army, where they could do more than "mimic fighting on
the stage," met with the approval of his congregation; but the S.R.O.
signs continued to go up nightly beside the ticket windows. When the
Richmond Theatre burned soon after New Year's, an entirely new
building was promptly raised on the old foundations. Opening night
was greeted with an "Inaugural Poem" by Henry Timrod, concluding:
Bid Liberty rejoice! Aye, though its day
Be jar or near, these clouds shall yet be red
With the large promise of the coming ray.
Meanwhile, with that calm courage which can smile
Amid the terrors of the wildest fray
Let us among the charms of Art awhile
Fleet the deep gloom away;
Nor yet forget that on each hand and head
Rest the dear rights for which we fight and pray.
If the production itself — Shakespeare's As You Like It; "but not as
ive like it," one critic unkindly remarked — left much to be desired in
Unhappy New Year [ 161 ]
the way of professional excellence, Richmonders were glad to have
found release "among the charms," and even the disgruntled reviewer
was pleased to note "that the audience evinced a disposition at once to
stop all rowdyism." For example, when the callboy came out from be-
hind the curtain to fasten down the carpet, certain ill-bred persons be-
gan to yell, "Soup! Soup!" but were promptly shushed by those around
them.
An even better show, according to some, was presented at the
Capitol whenever Congress was in session, though unfortunately — or
fortunately, depending on the point of view — these theatricals were in
general unavailable to the public, being conducted behind closed doors.
It was not so much what occurred in the regular course of business
that was lively or amusing (for, as was usual with such bodies, there was
a good deal more discussion of what to do than there was of doing. One
member interrupted a long debate as to a proper time for adjournment
by remarking, "If the House would adjourn and not meet any more, it
would benefit the country." Others outside the legislative assembly
agreed, including a Deep South editor who, learning that Congress had
spent the past year trying without success to agree on a device for the
national seal, suggested "A terrapin passant" with the motto "Never in
haste"); it was what happened beside the point, so to speak, that pro-
vided the excitement. In early February the Alabama fire-eater Wil-
liam L. Yancey, opposing the creation of a Confederate Supreme Court
— which, incidentally, never came into being because of States Rights
obstructionists — so infuriated Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, a moderate,
that he threw a cutglass inkstand at the speaker and cut his cheek to
the bone. As Yancey, spattered with blood and ink, started for him
across the intervening desks, Hill followed up with a second shot, this
time a heavy tumbler, which missed, and the sergeant-at-arms had to
place both men in restraint and remove them from the chamber. Less
fortunate was the chief clerk, shot to death on Capitol Square two
months later by the journal clerk, who was angry at having been ac-
cused of slipshod work by his superior. The killer was sentenced to
eighteen years in the penitentiary, but nothing at all was done to a
woman who appeared one day on the floor of the House and proceeded
to cowhide a Missouri congressman. She too was a government clerk,
but it developed that her wrath had been aroused by information that
Congress, in connection with enforcement of the Conscription Act,
was about to require all clerks to divulge their ages. Deciding that
the woman was demented, the House voted its confidence in the unlucky
Missourian, who apparently had been selected at random. No such vote
was ever given Jefferson Davis's old Mississippi stump opponent
Henry S. Foote, who worked hard to deserve the reputation of being
the stormiest man in Congress. He fought with his fists, in and out of
the chamber, and was always ready to fall back on dueling pistols,
[i6i] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
with which he had had considerable experience. An altercation with an
expatriate Irishman and a Tennessee colleague, who struck Foote over
the head with an umbrella and then dodged nimbly to keep from being
shot, caused all three to be brought into the Mayor's Court and placed
under a peace bond. Another three-sided argument occurred in the
course of a congressional hearing in which a Commissary Department
witness was so badgered by Foote that the two came to blows. Foote
tore off his adversary's shirt bosom, and when Commissary General
Lucius B. Northrop came to the witness's assistance Foote knocked
him into a corner. According to some who despised Colonel Northrop,
asserting that he was attempting to convert the southern armies to
vegetarianism, this was Foote's one real contribution to the Confederate
war effort. But he was by no means through providing excitement.
In the course of a speech by E. S. Dargan of Alabama, Foote broke
in to call him a "damned rascal," which so infuriated the elderly con-
gressman that he went for the Mississippian with a knife. Foote avoided
the lunge, and then — Dargan by now had been disarmed and lay
pinned to the floor by colleagues — stepped back within range and,
striking an attitude not unworthy of Edwin Booth, whose work he
much admired, hissed at the prostrate Alabamian: "I defy the steel of the
assassin! "
All this was part and parcel of the revolution-in-progress,
and if much of it was scandalous and distasteful, most Confederates could
take that too in stride, along with spiraling prices and increasing scarci-
ties. A native inclination toward light-heartedness served them well
in times of strain. What the newcomers to Richmond lacked in tone they
more than made up for in gaiety. Practically nothing was exempt from
being laughed at nowadays, not even the sacred escutcheon of Virginia,
whose motto Sic sejnper tyrannis, engraved below the figure of Liberty
treading down Britannia, was freely rendered as "Take your foot off
my neck!" Officers and men on leave and furlough from the Rappahan-
nock line opened Volume I, "Famine," of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables,
which had come out in France the year before, and professed surprise at
finding that it was not about themselves, "Lee's Miserables, Faintin'."
One whose spirits never seemed to falter was Judah Benjamin, who
remarked in this connection that it was "wrong and useless to disturb
oneself and thus weaken one's energy to bear what was foreordained."
This hedonistic fatalist went his way, invariably smiling, whether in at-
tendance at government councils or at Johnny Worsham's green baize
tables across the way. He once assured Varina Davis that with a glass
of McHenry sherry, of which she had a small supply, and beaten biscuits
made of flour from Crenshaw Mills, spread with a paste made of Eng-
lish walnuts from a tree on the White House grounds, "a man's pa-
triotism became rampant." She found him amusing, an ornament to her
receptions, and an excellent antidote to the FFV's who currently were
Unhappy New Year [ 163 ]
condemning her as "disloyal to the South" because of a rumor that she
had employed a white nurse for her baby.
The easy laughter was infectious, though some could hear it for
what it was, part of an outward pose assumed at times to hide or hold
back tears. What was happening behind the mask — not only Benjamin's,
but the public's at large — no one could say for certain. Presently, how-
ever, there were signs that the mask was beginning to crack, or at
any rate slip, and thus disclose what it had been designed to cover.
When the President proclaimed March 5 another "day of fasting and
prayer," this too was not exempt from unregenerate laughter; "Fasting
in the midst of famine!" some remarked sardonically. Then, just short
of one month later, on Holy Thursday — Easter came on April 5, a
week before the second anniversary of Sumter — a demonstration
staged on the streets of the capital itself gave the authorities cause to
question whether all was as well concerning public morale here in the
East as they had supposed, especially among those citizens who could
not enjoy the relaxations afforded by such places as Johnny Worsham's,
where a lavish buffet was maintained for the refreshment of patrons at
all hours. The Holy Thursday demonstration, at least at the start, was
concerned with more basic matters: being known, then and thereafter,
as the Bread Riot.
Apparently it began at the Oregon Hill Baptist church, where
Mary Jackson, a huckster with "straight, strong features and a vixenish
eye," harangued a group of women who had gathered to protest the ris-
ing cost of food. Adjourning to Capitol Square they came under the
leadership of a butcher's Amazonian assistant, Minerva Meredith by
name. Six feet tall and further distinguished by a long white feather that
stood up from her hat and quivered angrily as she tossed her head,
she proposed that they move on the shops to demand goods at govern-
ment prices and to take them by force if this was refused. As she spoke
she took from under her apron, by way of emphasis, a Navy revolver
and a Bowie knife. Brandishing these she set out for the business section
at the head of a mob which quickly swelled to about three hundred per-
sons, including the children some of the women had in tow. "Bread!
Bread!" they shouted as they marched. Governor John Letcher, who
had watched from his office as the demonstration got under way, had the
mayor read the Riot Act to them, but they hooted and surged on past
him, smashing plate-glass windows in their anger and haste to get at the
goods in the shops on Main and Cary. It was obvious that they were
after more than food, for they emerged with armloads of shoes and
clothes, utensils and even jewelry, which some began to pile in to hand-
carts they had thought to bring along. Governor Letcher sent for a com-
pany of militia and threatened to fire on the looters when it arrived, but
the women sneered at him, as they had done at the mayor, and went on
with their vandalism. Just then, however, those on the outer fringes of
[i6 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
the mob saw a tall thin man dressed in gray homespun climb onto a
loaded dray and begin to address them sternly. They could not hear what
he was saying, but they saw him do a strange thing. He took money from
his pockets and tossed it in their direction. Whereupon they fell silent
and his voice came through: "You say you are hungry and have no
money. Here is all I have. It is not much, but take it." His pockets
empty of all but his watch, he took that out too, but instead of throw-
ing it at them, as he had done the money, he stood with it open in his
hand, glancing sidelong at the militia company which had just arrived.
"We do not desire to injure anyone," he said in a voice that rang clear
above the murmur of the crowd, "but this lawlessness must stop. I will
give you five minutes to disperse. Otherwise you will be fired on."
Recognizing the President — and knowing, moreover, that he
was not given to issuing idle threats — the mob began to disperse, first
slowly, then rapidly as the deadline approached. By the time the five
minutes were up, there was no one left for the soldiers to fire at. Davis
put his watch back in his pocket, climbed down off the dray, and
returned to his office. Outwardly calm, inwardly he was so concerned
that he did something he had never done before. He made a special ap-
peal to the Richmond press, requesting that it "avoid all reference di-
rectly or indirectly to the affair," and ordered the telegraph company to
"permit nothing relative to the unfortunate disturbance ... to be sent
over the telegraph lines in any direction for any purpose." He feared
the reaction abroad, as well as in other parts of the South, if it became
known that the streets of the Confederate capital had been the scene of a
riot that had as its cause, if only by pretense, a shortage of food. Two
days later, however, the Enquirer broke the story by way of refuting
defeatist rumors that were beginning to be spread. Identifying the rioters
as "a handful of prostitutes, professional thieves, Irish and Yankee hags,
gallows birds from all lands but our own," the paper denounced them
for having broken into "half a dozen shoe stores, hat stores and tobacco
houses and robbed them of everything but bread, which was just the
thing they wanted least."
This one attempt at suggesting censorship was as useless as it was
ineffective: Richmond was by no means the only place where such dis-
turbances occurred in the course of Holy Week. Simultaneously in At-
lanta a group of about fifteen well-dressed women entered a store on
Whitehall Street and asked the price of bacon, fi.ioa pound, they were
told: whereupon their man-tall leader, a shoemaker's wife "on whose
countenance rested care and determination," produced a revolver with
which she covered the grocer while her companions snatched what they
wanted from the shelves, paying their own price or nothing. From there
they proceeded to other shops along the street, repeating the perform-
ance until their market baskets were full, and then went home. A similar
raid was staged at about the same time in Mobile, as well as in other
Unhappy New Year [ 165 ]
towns and cities throughout the South. Presently countrywomen took
their cue from their urban sisters. North Carolina experienced practi-
cally an epidemic of demonstrations by irate housewives. Near La-
fayette, Alabama, a dozen such — armed, according to one correspond-
ent, with "guns, pistols, knives, and tongues" — attacked a rural mill and
seized a supply of flour, while a dozen more came down out of the hills
around Abingdon, Virginia, and cowered merchants into handing over
cotton yarn and cloth; wagon trains were stopped at gunpoint and
robbed of corn near Thomasville and Marietta, Georgia. All these were
but a few among the many, and there were those who saw in this ubiq-
uitous manifestation of discontent the first crack in the newly con-
structed edifice of government. If the Confederacy could not be de-
feated from without, then it might be abolished from within; for the
protests were not so much against shortages, which were by no means
chronic at this stage, as they were against the inefficiency which re-
sulted in spiraling prices. These observers saw the demonstrations, in
fact — despite the recent successes of southern arms, both East and West
— as symptoms of war weariness, the one national ailment which
could lead to nothing but defeat. The new government could survive,
and indeed had survived already, an assortment of calamities; but that
did not and could not include the loss of the will to fight, either by the
soldiers in its armies or by the people on its home front.
No one saw the danger more clearly than the man whose princi-
pal task — aside, that is, from his duties as Commander in Chief, which
now as always he placed first — was to do all he could to avert it.
Recently he had undertaken a 2500-mile year-end journey to investi-
gate and shore up crumbling morale, with such apparent success that on
his return he could report to Congress, convening in Richmond for its
third session on January 12, that the state of the nation, in its civil as
well as in its military aspect, "affords ample cause for congratulation
and demands the most fervent expression of our thankfulness to the Al-
mighty Father, who has blessed our cause. We are justified in asserting,
with a pride surely not unbecoming, that these Confederate States
have added another to the lessons taught by history for the instruction
of man; that they have afforded another example of the impossibil-
ity of subjugating a people determined to be free, and have demon-
strated that no superiority of numbers or available resources can over-
come the resistance offered by such valor in combat, such constancy
under suffering, and such cheerful endurance of privation as have
been conspicuously displayed by this people in the defense of their
rights and liberties." Moreover, he added, flushed by the confidence his
words had generated: "By resolute perseverance in the path we have
hitherto pursued, by vigorous efforts in the development of all our re-
sources for defense, and by the continued exhibition of the same unfal-
tering courage in our soldiers and able conduct in their leaders as have
[ i66] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
distinguished the past, we have every reason to expect that this will be
the closing year of the war."
Since then, despite continued successful resistance by the armies
in the field, symptoms of unrest among civilians had culminated in the
rash of so-called Bread Riots, the largest of which had occurred in the
capital itself and had been broken up only by the personal intervention
of the Chief Executive. Two days later — on April 10, just short of
three months since his confident prediction of an early end to the conflict
— Davis issued, in response to a congressional resolution passed the week
before, a proclamation "To the People of the Confederate States." Ob-
serving that "a strong impression prevails throughout the country that
the war . . . may terminate during the present year," Congress urged
the people not to be taken in by such false hopes, but rather to "look to
prolonged war as the only condition proffered by the enemy short of
subjugation." The presidential proclamation, issued broadcast across the
land, afforded the people the unusual opportunity of seeing their Presi-
dent eat his words, not only by revoking his previous prediction, but by
substituting another which clearly implied that what lay ahead was a
longer and harder war than ever.
Though "fully concurring in the views thus expressed by Con-
gress," he began with the same boldness of assertion as before. "We have
reached the close of the second year of the war, and may point with just
pride to the history of our young Confederacy. Alone, unaided, we have
met and overthrown the most formidable combination of naval and mili-
tary armaments that the lust of conquest ever gathered together for the
subjugation of a free people. . . . The contrast between our past and
present condition is well calculated to inspire full confidence in the tri-
umph of our arms. At no previous period of the war have our forces
been so numerous, so well organized, and so thoroughly disciplined,
armed, and equipped as at present." Then he passed to darker matters.
"We must not forget, however, that the war is not yet ended, and that
we are still confronted by powerful armies and threatened by numer-
ous fleets. . . . Your country, therefore, appeals to you to lay aside
all thoughts of gain, and to devote yourselves to securing your liberties,
without which those gains would be valueless. . . . Let fields be de-
voted exclusively to the production of corn, oats, beans, peas, pota-
toes, and other food for man and beast; let corn be sown broadcast for
fodder in immediate proximity to railroads, rivers, and canals, and let
all your efforts be directed to the prompt supply of these articles in the
districts where our armies are operating. . . . Entertaining no fear that
you will either misconstrue the motives of this address or fail to respond
to the call of patriotism, I have placed the facts fully and frankly before
you. Let us all unite in the performance of our duty, each in his own
sphere, and with concerted, persistent, and well-directed effort . . . we
shall maintain the sovereignty and independence of these Confederate
Unhappy New Year [ 167 ]
States, and transmit to our posterity the heritage bequeathed to us by our
fathers."
As usual, the people responded well for the most part to a clear
statement of necessity. But there were those who reacted otherwise.
The Georgia fire-eater Robert Toombs, for example, who had left the
cabinet to join the army on the day of First Manassas and then had left
the army to re-enter politics after his one big day at Sharpsburg, petu-
lantly announced that he was increasing his plantation's cotton acreage.
Nor were opposition editors inclined to neglect the opportunity to
launch the verbal barbs they had been sharpening through months of
increasing dissatisfaction. "Mr Davis is troubled by blindness," the Mo-
bile Tribune told its subscribers, "is very dyspeptic and splenetic, and
as prejudiced and stubborn as a man can well be, and not be well."
Thus did the Confederacy enter upon its third year of war.
X 4 X
Disenchantment was mainly limited to civilians, but it was by no means
limited to the sphere of civilian activities. Illogically or not — that is,
despite the lopsided triumphs at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bluffs,
the flood-reversing coups at Holly Springs and Galveston, the brilliant
cavalry forays into Kentucky and West Tennessee, and the absence of
anything resembling a clear-cut defeat east of the Mississippi — there
was a growing impression that victory, on field after field, brought little
more than temporary joy, which soon gave way to sobering realiza-
tions. The public's reaction was not unlike that of a boxer who delivers
his best punch, square on the button, then sees his opponent merely
blink and shake his head and bore back in. People began to suspect that if
the North could survive Fredericksburg and the Mud March, Chickasaw
Bluffs and the loss of the Cairo to a demijohn of powder, it might well
be able to survive almost anything the South seemed able to inflict. A
whole season of victories apparently had done nothing to bring peace
and independence so much as one day closer. Howell Cobb of Georgia
could say, not altogether in jest, "Only two things stand in the way of
an amicable settlement of the whole difficulty: the Landing of the Pil-
grims and Original Sin," while the Richmond Examiner could simultane-
ously call attention to the chilling fact that, aside from Sumter, "[Lin-
coln's] pledge once deemed foolish by the South, that he would 'hold,
occupy, and possess' all the forts belonging to the United States Gov-
ernment, has been redeemed almost to the letter."
Fredericksburg had been hailed at the outset as the turning point
of the war. Presently, however, as Lee and his army failed to find a way
to follow it up, the triumph paled to something of a disappointment. In
time, paradoxically, the more perceptive began to see that it had indeed
[i68] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
been a turning point, though in a sense quite different from the one origi-
nally implied; for no battle East or West, whether a victory or a defeat,
showed more plainly the essential toughness of the blue-clad fighting
man than this in which, judging by a comparison of the casualties in-
flicted and received, he suffered the worst of his several large-scale drub-
bings. But this was an insight that came gradually and only to those who
were not only able but also willing to perceive it. Murfreesboro was
more immediately disappointing in respect to Confederate expectations,
and no such insight was required. Here the contrast between claims and
accomplishments was as stark as it was sudden. First it was seen to be a
much less brilliant victory than the southern commander had announced
before his guns had hushed their growling. Then it was seen to be
scarcely a victory at all. It was seen, in fact, to have several of the aspects
of a typical defeat: not the least of which was the undeniable validity of
the Federal claim to control of the field when the smoke had cleared. "So
far the news has come in what may be called the classical style of the
Southwest," the Examiner observed caustically near the end of the first
week in January, having belatedly learned of Bragg's withdrawal.
"When the Southern army fights a battle, we first hear that it has gained
one of the most stupendous victories on record; that regiments from Mis-
sissippi, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, &c. have exhibited an irresistible and
superhuman valor unknown in history this side of Sparta and Rome. As
for their generals, they usually get all their clothes shot off, and replace
them with a suit of glory. The enemy, of course, is simply annihilated.
Next day more dispatches come, still very good, but not quite as good as
the first. The telegrams of the third day are invariably such as make a
mist, a muddle, and a fog of the whole affair."
No mist, muddle, or fog could hide Bragg from the ire aroused
when the public learned the premature and insubstantial basis for his wire
announcing that God had granted him and them a Happy New Year.
What saved him from the immediate consequences of their anger was his
adversary Rosecrans, who, despite his recent promise to "press [the reb-
els] to the wall," not only refused to follow up the victory he claimed,
but resisted with all his strength — as he had done through the months
preceding the march out of Nashville, pleading the need to lay in "a cou-
ple of millions of rations" — the efforts by his superiors to prod him into
motion. Crittenden, who had commanded the unassailed left wing
throughout the first day's fight and then repulsed his fellow-Kentuckian
Breckinridge on the second, stated the case as it appeared to many in the
Union ranks: "The battle was fought for the possession of Middle Ten-
nessee. We went down to drive the Confederates out of Murfreesboro,
and we drove them out. They went off a few miles and camped again.
And we, although we were the victors, virtually went into hospital for
six months before we could march after them again." He added, by way
of developing a theory: "As in most of our battles, very meager fruits
Unhappy New Year [ 169 ]
resulted to either side from such partial victories as were for the most
part won. Yet it was a triumph. It showed that in the long run the big
purse and the big battalions — both on our side — must win; and it
proved that there were no better soldiers than ours."
Rosecrans disagreed with much of this critique, particularly the
remark that the army had gone "into hospital," but he not only sub-
scribed to Crittenden's opinion about the big purse and the big battalions,
he also took it a step further by insisting that the last ounce be wrung
from the advantage. What good were riches, he seemed to be asking, un-
less they were at hand? When he swung the purse he wanted it to be
heavy. "I believe the most fatal errors of this war have begun in an impa-
tient desire of success, that would not take time to get ready," he pro-
tested in mid-February, by way of reply to Halleck's continuous urging.
So the general-in-chief changed his tack. "There is a vacant major gener-
alcy in the Regular Army," he wired on March 1, "and I am authorized
to say that it will be given to the general in the field who first wins an im-
portant and decisive victory." The implication was that Rosecrans had
better get to Chattanooga before Grant got to Vicksburg; but Old Rosy
did not react at all in the way that had been intended. "As an officer and
a citizen, I feel degraded to see such auctioneering of honor," he re-
plied. "Have we a general who would fight for his own personal benefit,
when he would not for honor and the country? He would come by his
commission basely in that case, and deserve to be despised by men of
honor." Halleck in turn resented this show of righteous indignation, and
said so, which only served to increase their differences. Rosecrans was
convinced by now that all of Washington was against him: especially
Stanton, who had promised, in the first flush of excitement over the news
of a hard-fought triumph, to withhold "nothing . . . within my power to
grant," but who lately had bridled at filling the balky commander's many
requisitions and requests, including one that his latest promotion be pre-
dated so as to give him rank over Grant and all the other western gen-
erals. Finally he protested to the President himself, who gave him little
satisfaction beyond assurances of admiration. "I know not a single enemy
of yours here," Lincoln wrote, and added: "Truth to speak, I do not ap-
preciate this matter of rank on paper as you officers do. The world will
not forget that you fought the battle of Stones River, and it will never
care a fig whether you rank Gen. Grant on paper, or he so ranks you."
By then it was mid-March. The bloody contest, ten weeks back,
had done much to increase Old Rosy's appreciation of the dangers in-
volved in challenging the rebs on their own ground. The rest of March
went by, and all of April. Still he would not budge. May followed. Still
he would not move until he was good and ready, down to the final nail
in the final horseshoe. As June came on, approaching the end of the six-
month term which Crittenden said the army spent "in hospital," Rose-
crans made a virtue of his immobility, claiming that by refraining from
[170] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
driving Bragg southward he was preventing him from co-operating with
Pemberton against Grant. Besides, he added, he had held a council of war
at which it had been decided to "observe a great military maxim, not to
risk two great and decisive battles at the same time." He thought it best
to wait till Vicksburg fell or Grant abandoned the effort to take it,
whereupon he himself would advance against Bragg and Chattanooga.
Halleck by now was fairly frantic. A master of maxims, he fired one back
at Rosecrans: "Councils of war never fight." But this had no more effect
than the earlier proddings had done; Old Rosy stayed exactly where he
was. If Bragg would only leave him alone, he would gladly return the
favor, at any rate until he was good and ready to advance. Just when that
would be he would not say.
He might have taken some measure of consolation, amid the prod-
dings, from the fact that his opponent's troubles quite overmatched his
own. The difference was that Rosecrans' woes came mainly from above,
whereas Bragg's came mainly from below. As a result, the latter were
not only more widely spread, they were also frequently sharper barbed.
His harsh discipline in camp, unbalanced by conspicuous victories in the
field, and his reputation as a commander who invariably retreated after
battle, whether his troops won or lost, had resulted in bitter censure
from all sides, civil as well as military, in and out of the newspapers. Rid-
ing one day near his Tullahoma headquarters, soon after his withdrawal
behind Duck River, he encountered a man wearing butternut garb and
requested information about the roads. When this had been given, the
general thanked him and, unable to tell from his clothes whether the man
was a soldier or a civilian — the kindest thing that could be said about
dress in the Army of Tennessee was that it was informal — asked if he
belonged to Bragg's army. "Bragg's army?" the countryman replied,
scowling at the grim-faced man on horseback. "Bragg's got no army.
He shot half of them himself, up in Kentucky, and the other half got
killed at Murfreesboro."
Bragg laughed and rode on, curbing for once his terrible temper.
But the experience rankled under pressure of newspaper criticisms leveled
at him while his troops were getting settled along their new defensive
line: particularly the charge, widely printed and reprinted, that he had
pulled out of Murfreesboro against the advice of his lieutenants. This was
patently untrue, as he could prove by the note from Cheatham and With-
ers, urging immediate retreat, which he had rejected, at least at first,
despite Polk's indorsement of their plea. Accordingly, he decided to
make an issue of it, addressing on January 1 1 a letter to his chief subordi-
nates. "It becomes necessary for me to save my fair name," he wrote, and
"stop the deluge of abuse which [threatens to] destroy my usefulness and
demoralize this army." He asked them to acquit him of the fabrication
that he had gone against their wishes in ordering a retreat, which in point
of fact "was resisted by me for some time after [it was] advised by my
Unhappy New Year [ 171 ]
corps and division commanders. . . . Unanimous as you were in council in
verbally advising a retrograde movement," he added, "I cannot doubt
that you will cheerfully attest the same in writing." So far, he was on safe
ground. Unwilling to let it go at that, however, he closed with some-
thing of a flourish: "I desire that you will consult your subordinate com-
manders and be candid with me. ... I shall retire without a regret if I find
I have lost the good opinion of my generals, upon whom I have ever re-
lied as upon a foundation of rock."
This last was what opened the floodgates. Though none could fail
to exonerate him from the specific charge that he had originated the no-
tion of retreat, his closing statement that he would retire if he found that
he had lost their good opinion presented the generals with a once-in-a-
lifetime opportunity, which they did not neglect. Hardee, after pointing
out that neither he nor his division commanders had proposed a with-
drawal, though they had made no objection once the decision had been
announced, replied that he had consulted his subordinates, as requested,
and found them "unanimous in the opinion that a change in the command
of this army is necessary. In this opinion I concur." He had "the highest
regard for the purity of your motives, your energy, and your personal
character," he told Bragg, but he was "convinced, as you must feel, that
the peril of the country is superior to all personal considerations." His
lieutenants replied in a similar vein. "I have consulted with my brigade
commanders," Cleburne wrote, "and they unite with me in personal re-
gard for yourself . . . but at the same time they see, with regret, and it
has also met my observation, that you do not possess the confidence of
the army in other respects in that degree necessary to secure success."
Breckinridge was as forthright, and what was more — the officers and
men of his division having found Bragg's report of the recent battle so
disparaging to themselves and their dead comrades that they had urged
their chief to challenge him to a duel — took perhaps the greatest satis-
faction of all in seizing the present chance to sit in judgment. "Acting
with the candor which you invoke," the former Vice President replied,
"[my brigade commanders] request me to say that, in their opinion, the
conduct of the military operations in front of Murfreesboro made it nec-
essary for our army to retire." Lest the irony of this be lost, he passed at
once to a summation. "They also request me to say that while they enter-
tain the highest respect for your patriotism, it is their opinion that you do
not possess the confidence of the army to an extent which will enable you
to be useful as its commander. In this opinion I feel bound to state that I
concur."
Polk was away on leave at the time, visiting his refugee family in
North Carolina, and in his absence Cheatham and Withers merely replied
with an acknowledgment that they had made the original suggestion to
withdraw. When the bishop returned at the end of the month he found
the army a-buzz with talk of this latest development. Since there was
[172] THE CIVIL WAR35T 1863
some difference of opinion as to whether Bragg had really intended to
call down all this thunder on his head, Polk wrote to ask whether his
chief had meant for him to answer both questions — 1 ) as to who was
responsible for bringing up the subject of retreat, and 2) as to whether
the army commander had lost the confidence of his subordinates — or
only the first. Bragg by now had had quite enough "candid" responses to
the second question, and stated that he had only wanted to get an opinion
on the inception of the retreat; "The paragraph relating to my superce-
dure was only an expression of the feeling with which I should receive
your replies." In that case, Polk responded, he believed the original bat-
tlefield note would suffice as a documentary answer. He was content to
let the matter drop. But learning presently that Hardee and his officers
felt that he had dodged the issue, thereby leaving them in the position of
insubordinate malcontents, he decided to write directly to his friend the
President, attaching the rather voluminous correspondence he had had
with Bragg. "I feel it my duty to say to you," he told Davis, "that had I
and my division commanders been asked to answer, our replies would
have coincided with those of the officers of the other corps. . . . My opin-
ion is he had better be transferred." The best place for him, Polk believed,
was Richmond, where "his capacity for organization and discipline,
which has not been equaled among us, could be used by you at head-
quarters with infinite advantage to the whole army. I think, too," he
added, "that the best thing to be done in supplying his place would be to
give his command to General Joseph E. Johnston. He will cure all dis-
content and inspire the army with new life and confidence. He is here on
the spot, and I am sure will be content to take it."
Davis was quite aware that Johnston was at Tullahoma, having
ordered him there two weeks ago, when Bragg's circular, together with
the replies of Hardee and his lieutenants, first landed on the presidential
desk. "Why General Bragg should have selected that tribunal, and have
invited its judgment upon him, is to me unexplained; it manifests, how-
ever, a condition of things which seems to me to require your presence."
So Davis wrote Johnston, who was engaged at the time in an inspection
of the Mobile defenses, instructing him to proceed at once to Bragg's
headquarters and determine "whether he had so far lost the confidence
of the army as to impair his usefulness in his present position. . . . You
will, I trust, be able, by conversation with General Bragg and others of
his command, to decide what the best interests of the service require, and
to give me the advice which I need at this juncture. As that army is part
of your command," the President added, knowing the Virginian's meticu-
losity in such matters, "no order will be necessary to give you authority
there, as, whether present or absent, you have a right to direct its opera-
tions and do whatever else belongs to the general commanding."
However, Johnston's squeamishness went further than Davis reck-
oned. He found much that was improper in the conduct of an inquiry
Unhappy New Year [173]
which might result in the displacement of the officer under investigation
by the one who was doing the investigating. Besides, he had a high regard
for the grim-faced North Carolinian's abilities. "Bragg has done wonders,
I think," he wrote privately. "No body of troops has done more in pro-
portion to numbers in the same time." x\ccordingly on February 3, ten
days after his arrival, although "incessant rain has permitted me to see
but a fourth of the troops as yet," he reported them "in high spirits, and
as ready as ever for fight." He found his confidence in Bragg not only
unshaken but "confirmed by his recent operations, which, in my opinion,
evince great vigor and skill." In short: "It would be very unfortunate to
remove him at this juncture, when he has just earned, if not won, the
gratitude of the country." He would report more fully, Johnston said,
when he had completed his inspection. Meanwhile, "I respectfully sug-
gest that, should it appear to you necessary to remove General Bragg, no
one in this army or engaged in this investigation ought to be his succes-
sor." Nine days later, his final report buttressed his first impression. He
had found the men "well clothed, healthy, and in good spirits," which gave
"positive evidence of General Bragg's capacity to command. . . . To me
it seems that the operations of this army in Middle Tennessee have been
conducted admirably. I can find no record of more effective fighting in
modern battles than that of this army in December, evincing great skill in
the commander and courage in the troops." He had heard, he said in clos-
ing, that Polk and Hardee had advised their present chief's removal and
his own appointment to the command; but "I am sure that you will agree
with me that the part I have borne in this investigation would render it
inconsistent with my personal honor to occupy that position. . . . General
Bragg should not be removed."
With that, he left for Chattanooga. Davis replied that he was
"truly gratified at the language of commendation which you employ in
relation to General Bragg," but he considered it "scarcely possible," in
the light of Polk's and Hardee's formal disapproval, "for [Bragg] to pos-
sess the requisite confidence of the troops." He still thought Johnston
should take over, and he could not see that this involved any breach of
military etiquette. Johnston was already in command, by rank and title,
whenever he was on the scene; "The removal of General Bragg would
only affect you so far as it deprived you of his services." However,
Davis assured him, "You shall not be urged by me to any course which
would wound your sensibility of views of professional propriety." In
early March, Johnston having made no reply to this, the Secretary of
War added his pleas to those of the Commander in Chief. It was his opin-
ion that Bragg should be "recalled altogether," but if Johnston's con-
science would not permit this, then he suggested that he keep him at hand,
"as an organizer and disciplinarian," in the post of assistant commander.
"Let me urge you, my dear general," Seddon wrote, "to think well, in
view of all the great interests to our beloved South . . . and, if possible,
[174] THE CIVIL WAR»" 1863
make the sacrifice of your honorable delicacy to the importance of the
occasion and the greatness of our cause." When Johnston still did not
reply — he was back in Mobile by now, though Davis and Seddon sup-
posed he was still in Chattanooga — the matter was taken out of his
hands by a wire from Richmond, which reached him on March 12: "Or-
der General Bragg to report to the War Department here for conference.
Assume yourself direct charge of the army in Middle Tennessee."
Perhaps Davis and Seddon had decided that what Johnston had
been wanting all along, and even hinting at, was for them to order him to
the post in spite of his objections; that way, the conditions of honor
would be met, since he would have done all he could to avoid the out-
come. If so, they were wrong. Johnston really did not want the command.
The fact was, he did not want the larger one he had already — his duties,
he said disparagingly, were those of an "inspector general" — despite the
President's and the Secretary's insistence that it was the most important
post in the Confederacy. If that was the case, Lee should have it as a
reward for his recent accomplishments; then "with great propriety,"
Johnston wrote in confidence to a friend, he himself could return to his
native Virginia and resume command of the army he had lost at Seven
Pines, "where the Yankee bullets found me." Now it looked as if that
hope was going up in smoke. He was ordered to Middle Tennessee, with
no alternative to compliance except submission of his resignation.
So it seemed. When he returned to Tullahoma on March 19, how-
ever, he found a way — still on grounds of sparing offense to what Sed-
don had called his "honorable delicacy" — at least to delay what he had
sought all this time to avoid. Bragg's wife was down with typhoid, de-
spaired of by the doctors, and her husband had given over his official
duties in order to be at her bedside round the clock. It was therefore no
more than normal courtesy, under the circumstances, for Johnston to
carry out that portion of the orders which required him to take command
of the army; but as for increasing the distracted general's present woes by
instructing him to report at once to Richmond, that was manifestly im-
possible, Johnston wired the authorities, "on account of Mrs Bragg's criti-
cal condition." Besides, he added, the country was "becoming practica-
ble" now that the rains had slacked and the roads were drying; "Should
the enemy advance, General Bragg will be indispensable here." Appar-
ently he intended to take the Secretary's earlier suggestion that he keep
the unpopular general at hand as his assistant. But presently even this went
by the board. By the time Mrs Bragg had recovered sufficiently from her
illness to permit her husband's return to active duty, Johnston himself was
bedridden, suffering from a debility brought on by a flare-up of his
wounds. "General Bragg is therefore necessary here," he notified Rich-
mond on April 10. "If conference with him is still desirable, might not a
confidential officer visit him, for the purpose, in Tullahoma? "
Unhappy New Year [ 175 ]
That was that; Bragg remained at his post by default, so to speak.
Meanwhile — principally by courtesy of Rosecrans, who, though the
methods employed to avoid compliance were quite different in each case,
would no more be budged by his superiors than Johnston would be influ-
enced by his — the Army of Tennessee enjoyed, throughout the opening
half of the year, the longest period of inaction afforded any considerable
body of Confederates in the whole course of the war. Polk's corps was on
the left at Shelbyville, Hardee's on the right at Wartrace, with cavalry
extending the long defensive line westward to Columbia and eastward to
McMinnville, seventy air-line miles apart. Breastworks protected by aba-
tis were thrown up along the critical center, and behind them, once the
countryside emerged from the quagmires created by the late winter and
early spring rains — which had afforded one self-styled etymologist the
opportunity to remark that the name of the little railroad town where
Bragg had his headquarters was derived from the conjunction of two
Greek words: tulla, meaning "mud," and homa, meaning "more mud"
— the infantry enjoyed the foison of the lush Duck River Valley and in-
dulged in such diversions as attending church services and revival meet-
ings (Bragg set an example here by allowing himself to be baptized in an
impressive ceremony) or chuck-a-luck games and cockfights, depending
on individual inclinations. The army's effective strength had risen by now
to almost 50,000 of all arms, including better than 15,000 cavalry, who
passed the time in a quite different manner by probing at Rosecrans'
flanks and rear and harassing his front.
Joe Wheeler got things off to a rousing start on January 1 3 with a
strike at Harpeth Shoals, midway between Nashville and Clarksville,
where he captured or sank four loaded packets and one lightly armored
gunboat, taking them under fire from the bank, and thus effectively
suspended the flow of goods up the Cumberland River, the main Federal
supply line. But this accomplishment was more than offset, another fifty
miles downstream, by the repulse he suffered on February 3 when he
launched an ill-conceived and poorly co-ordinated assault on an outnum-
bered but stout blue garrison at Dover, two weeks short of the anniver-
sary of the fall of adjacent Fort Donelson to Grant. Bedford Forrest,
who had not only lost some of his best men but had also had two fine
horses shot from under him in the course of attacks which he had advised
against making in the first place, was so incensed by Wheeler's handling
of the affair that he bluntly told the young commander that he would
resign from the army before he would fight again under his direction.
The discouraged graybacks limped back to Columbia, the western tip of
Bragg's long crescent. Meanwhile, far out the opposite horn, Morgan
was doing no better, if indeed as well. With two of his regiments de-
[17^]
THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
tached to stir up excitement in Kentucky, he too suffered a bloody re-
pulse at the hands of an inferior force on March 20 at Milton, fifteen
miles northeast of Murfreesboro, and still another, two weeks later, at
nearby Liberty, which resulted in his being driven in some confusion back
on his base at McMinnville. Perhaps the best that could be said for all
these various affairs, at any rate from the Confederate point of view, was
that they all occurred within the Union lines and therefore served, victo-
ries and defeats alike, to keep Rosecrans off balance by increasing his na-
tive caution and apprehensiveness. "Their numerous cavalry goads and
worries me," he had informed Washington at the outset, "but I will try
to be equal to them."
This was going to be more difficult than he knew. Even as he
wrote, Earl Van Dorn, the South's ranking major general — ordered
north by Johnston over Pemberton's frantic protest at thus being practi-
cally stripped of cavalry despite the skill he recently had shown in han-
dling that arm — was on the way from Mississippi with two divisions of
horsemen, all thirsty for more of the glory they lately had tasted when
they threw a whole Yankee army into retreat from Holly Springs. In
this respect, their leader was the thirstiest man among them. After the
Transmississippi disasters and the Corinth fiasco, which had resulted,
amid wholesale condemnation, in his being superseded as commander of
his home state forces, his bad luck had suddenly turned good, and he was
eager to take further advantage of the switch. Presently, soon after his
arrival on February 2 2 at Columbia, where he assumed responsibility for
protecting the left horn of Bragg's crescent while Wheeler protected the
right, Rosecrans gave the diminutive Mississippian just the chance he had
been seeking ever since his return to his first love, cavalry. The Federal
Unhappy New Year [ 177 ]
plan was for a convergence of two infantry columns, one out of A4ur-
freesboro under Phil Sheridan, the other out of Franklin, directly south of
Nashville, under Colonel John Coburn; they would unite at Spring Hill,
a dozen miles north of Columbia, then move together against that place,
foraging as they went. Coburn set out on March 4, with just under 3000
of all arms. Van Dorn was waiting for him next morning at Thompson's
Station, just above the intended point of convergence, with twice as
many men — including Forrest, who had been transferred in considera-
tion of his vow to serve no more under Wheeler. The result was a sudden
and stunning victory, cinched by Forrest, who came in on the flank and
rear while Van Dorn maintained pressure against the front, and a bag of
122 1 prisoners, including Coburn, whose artillery and cavalry, along
with one of his infantry regiments assigned to guard the forage train,
had fled at the first detection of the odds. His thirst unslaked, Van Dorn
sent his captives south and turned east to tackle Sheridan, intending thus
to sweep the board of all available opponents, but found that the other
column had taken warning from the boom of guns and pulled back out
of danger.
Rosecrans too had taken alarm, and though his present-for-duty
strength now stood at 80,124, as compared to Bragg's 49,068, he began to
suspect that he was outnumbered. "I am not, as you know, an alarmist,"
he wired Halleck on the day after Coburn's defeat, "but I do not think
it will do to risk as we did before." He reinforced the threatened quarter,
causing the rebel horsemen to pull back. But when the blue tide once
more receded, Van Dorn returned again, cutting and slashing, left and
right, and playing all the while on Rosecrans' fears. On March 24, having
leapfrogged his headquarters to Spring Hill, he sent Forrest against
Brentwood (ten miles north of Federal-held Franklin) where a garrison
of about 800 Wisconsin and Michigan infantry protected army stores and
a stockaded railroad bridge across the Little Harpeth River. Forrest ap-
peared before the place next morning, demanding an unconditional sur-
render. "Come and take us," Colonel Edward Bloodgood replied stoutly,
until he saw the graybacks preparing to do just that: whereupon he
changed his mind and hauled down his flag. Setting fire to the stockade
and packing the stores for removal along with his captives, Forrest sent
one regiment up the Nashville pike to spread the scare in that direction —
which it did, penetrating the southern environs of the city and riding
within plain sight of the capitol tower — while the main body, after
pausing to fight a confused rear-guard action provoked by a blue column
that moved up from Franklin, made its getaway eastward before turning
south to safety. In a general order issued on the last day of the month,
Bragg expressed the "pride and gratification" he felt as a result of the
"two brilliant and successful affairs recently achieved by the forces of
the cavalry of Major General Van Dorn."
Unwilling to rest on his laurels now that fortune's smile was
[i 7 8] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
broadening still further, Van Dorn moved on April 10 against Franklin
itself. A forced reconnaissance, he called it afterwards, though the defend-
ers insisted that it had been an all-out attempt to take the place by storm.
In support of the former contention was the fact that casualties were
fewer than a hundred on each side; anyhow, he disengaged and withdrew
when he found that the Union commander, Major General Gordon
Granger, had been reinforced to a strength of about 8000. Back at Spring
Hill, he continued to design projects for the discomfiture of the enemy,
assisting Bragg to hold onto the fruitful region despite the odds which
favored a Federal advance. On through April he labored, and into May,
though apparently not so exclusively as to require him to abandon other
pursuits; for at 10 o'clock on the morning of May 7, Dr George B. Peters,
a local citizen, walked into headquarters, where Van Dorn was hard at
work at his desk, and shot him in the back of the head with a pistol. He
died about 2 o'clock that afternoon, by which time the assassin was safe
within the Union lines, having ridden off in the buggy he had left parked
outside while he stepped indoors to carry out his project. The accepted
explanation was that the doctor had chosen this emphatic means to pro-
test the general's attention to his young wife, though there were some
who claimed that he had done the shooting for political reasons. At any
rate, that was the end of the saga of Buck Van Dorn. Fortune's smile had
turned out fickle after all, and they buried him in Columbia next day.
Wheeler had got back in stride by then with a double blow at
Rosecrans' rail supply lines on April 10, the day Van Dorn tested the
Franklin defenses and found them strong. The first was scored northeast
of Nashville, beyond Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, by secretly posting
guns along the near bank of a bend that took the Cumberland River
within 500-yard range of the Louisville & Nashville tracks. After a wait
of two hours, Wheeler reported, "a very large locomotive came in view,
drawing eighteen cars loaded with horses and other stock." Though the
target was moving his marksmanship was excellent, according to a Fed-
eral brigadier. "The first shot knocked off the dome of the locomotive,
the next went through the boiler, one shot broke out a spoke in one of
the driving-wheels." When the engine stalled in a cloud of steam, the
gunners continued to pump shells into the cars, scattering bluecoats,
horses, and cattle in all directions. Meanwhile, on the Nashville & Chatta-
nooga side of the Tennessee capital, another group of Wheeler's men
rode into Antioch, where they ambushed and derailed a train by spread-
ing the tracks and took from the wreckage about seventy Union captives
— including twenty officers, three of whom were members of Rose-
crans' staff — along with some forty Confederates en route to Ohio
prison camps, $30,000 in greenbacks, and a large mail containing much
useful information. Loaded with booty, the raiders got away eastward to
join their friends, who by now had ridden back past the Hermitage after
Unhappy New Year [ 179 ]
their shooting-gallery fun on the Cumberland. Wheeler's total cost for
both accomplishments was one man wounded.
He was cheered all round and greeted with smiles on his return,
for both actions had a somewhat comic tinge. But the loudest cheers and
the broadest smiles were reserved for Bedford Forrest, who began to win
his nom de guerre "the Wizard of the Saddle" with an exploit which took
him, through the closing days of April and the opening days of May, into
parts of three states and across the northern width of Alabama. He was
drawn in that direction by a Federal project which got under way, by
coincidence on that same April 10, with the embarkation at Nashville of
an expedition designed to sever Bragg's main supply line, the Western &
Atlantic Railroad, between Atlanta and Chattanooga. This had been at-
tempted once before, a year ago this week, but had resulted in the Great
Locomotive Chase and the capture of the twenty-two spies who tried it.
The new plan, while perhaps equally daring, was of a quite different na-
ture. Taking a page from the book the rebel cavalry fought by — partic-
ularly John Morgan and Forrest himself — Colonel Abel D. Streight,
New- York-born commander of a regiment of Hoosier infantry, pro-
posed to Rosecrans that a large body of men, say 2000, be mounted for a
quick but powerful thrust, into and out of the South's vitals. Rosecrans,
who so often had been on the receiving end of this kind of thing, was
delighted at the prospect of turning the tables, and his delight increased
when Streight removed his final objection by agreeing to mount the men
on mules instead of horses, of which there was a shortage; mules, he said,
were not only more sure-footed, they were also more intelligent.
(Which was true, so far as it went, though that was by no means all of
the story. Mules had other, less admirable qualities: as he would presently
discover.) At any rate, Rosecrans gave his approval to the project, des-
ignated Streight as commander, and assigned him three more regiments
of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois infantry, together with two companies of
North Alabama Unionists — a breed of men who were known to their
late compatriots as "homemade Yankees," but who were expected to prove
invaluable as guides through a region unfamiliar to everyone else in the fly-
ing column — and a requisition for some nine hundred quartermaster
mules. This would mount only about half of the troops, but Rosecrans
explained that the rest could secure animals by commandeering them
from rebel sympathizers while on the way to their starting point in the
northeast corner of Mississippi.
So Streight got his men and mules aboard the transports and
steamed next morning down the Cumberland to unload at Palmyra, on
the left bank just around the bend from Clarksville, for a stock-gathering
march to Fort Henry, where they again met the transports for the long
ride south up the Tennessee to Eastport, Aiississippi. That was the true
starting point, tactically speaking, but Streight — a broad-chested man of
soldierly appearance, just past forty, with a tall forehead, light-colored
[i8o] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
eyes, a fleshy, powerful-looking nose, and a dark, well- trimmed beard
framing a wide, determined mouth exposed below a clean-shaven upper
lip — had already encountered complications well outside the original
margin he had allowed for error. For one thing, after waiting to pick up
rations and forage on the Ohio, the navy did not turn up at Fort Henry
on time, with the result that he did not reach Eastport until April 19,
three days behind schedule. For another, a delayed check disclosed that a
large proportion of the quartermaster mules were sadly afflicted with
distemper, while many others were unbroken colts, not over two years
old. This last exposed a further drawback; for he found that his
converted infantrymen, as one of them remarked, "were at first very
easily dismounted, frequently in a most undignified and unceremonious
manner." Practice might improve the men's equestrian skill, but the mules
were going to remain a problem. About Eve hundred had been comman-
deered on the course of the overland march, which more than made up
for the hundred-odd who died of sickness and exhaustion while en route;
but this gain was canceled on the evening of his arrival at Eastport. Re-
turning to headquarters about midnight from a conference with Briga-
dier General Grenville M. Dodge, who had brought a 7500-man column
over from Corinth to serve as a screen for the raiders' departure, he
learned that some four hundred of the creatures — naturally the most
intelligent of the lot — had escaped from their crudely built corrals and
now were scattered about the countryside, disrupting the stillness of the
night and mocking his woes with brays that had the sound of fiendish
laughter. Two more days were spent here in rounding them up; half of
them, that is, for the rest were never recovered. However, Dodge made
up the difference with animals out of his pack train, and Streight at last
got started in earnest, moving eastward across Bear Creek on the morn-
ing of April 2 2 .
Five days behind schedule, but still protected from inquisitive
eyes by the screen Dodge's troops had drawn along the south bank of the
Tennessee River, he reached Tuscumbia late on the 24th and called a
final two-day rest halt before resuming the march at 1 1 p.m. of the 26th,
his force reduced to 1500 by a rigid inspection in which the surgeons
culled such men as they judged unfit for the rigorous work ahead. All
next day, and the next, as the column moved south to Russellville, then
eastward to Mount Hope, rain and mud held its progress to a crawl and
300 of the fledgling troopers were reconverted to infantry because their
mounts were too weak to carry anything heavier than a saddle. On the
29th, however, the sun broke through, giving "strong hopes of better
times," as Streight declared in his last rearward message, and he began to
pick up speed, along with replacements for his ailing mules. Thirty-five
miles he made that day, clearing Moulton to make camp that night at the
western foot of Day's Gap, a narrow defile piercing a lofty ridge that
signaled the advent of the Appalachians. At this point, with the tactically
Unhappy New Year [ 181 ]
dangerous flatlands left behind, he was about halfway to his first objec-
tive: Rome, Georgia, where the Confederacy had a cannon foundry and
machine shops for the Western & Atlantic, whose main line was barely a
half-day's ride beyond. Starting early next morning, the last day of April,
Streight rode at the head of the column toiling upward through the gap.
"The sun shone out bright and beautiful as spring day's sun ever
beamed," his adjutant later recalled, "and from the smouldering camp-
fires of the previous night the mild blue smoke ascended in graceful
curves and mingled with the gray mist slumbering on the mountain tops
above." There was in fact much that was dreamlike and idyllic about the
scene — "well calculated to inspire and refresh the minds of our weary
soldiers," the admiring lieutenant phrased it — until suddenly, without
previous intimation of a transition, as Streight and the forward elements
of the column neared the crest, the dream shifted kaleidoscopically into
nightmare. From downhill, in the direction of last night's camp, the deep-
voiced booms of guns, mixed in with the tearing rattle of musketry,
abruptly informed him that he was under attack.
It was Forrest. A week ago today — the day after Streight left
Eastport — he had received at Spring Hill, Tennessee, orders from Bragg
to proceed south to the Florence-Tuscumbia region and assist the inade-
quate local defense units to oppose the force moving eastward under
Dodge. He left next morning, April 24, and thirty-six hours later had his
1577-man brigade at Brown's Ferry, Alabama, ninety miles away. Leav-
ing one of his three regiments to guard the north bank of the Tennessee
in case Dodge decided to strike in that direction, he ferried the others
across on the 26th and moved west through Courtland to Town Creek,
which he reached in time to challenge a Federal crossing. The long-range
skirmish continued until dusk of the following day, when Forrest re-
ceived word from a scout that a mounted column estimated at 2000 men
had left Mount Hope that morning, headed east. This was the first he had
heard of Streight's existence, but he decided at once that this was the
major threat, not the larger force immediately to his front. Accordingly,
leaving Dodge to the local defenders and the regiment already posted
beyond the river, he took off southward at dawn of the 29th for Moul-
ton, which Streight had cleared six hours before. At midnight, having
covered fifty miles of road with just over a thousand horsemen and eight
guns, he went into bivouac, four miles short of Streight's camp at Day's
Gap f in order to give his saddle-weary troopers some rest for tomorrow,
and soon after sunrise was banging away at the Federal rear.
In the course of the three-day running fight which followed, the
pursued had certain definite advantages. The first was a superiority of
numbers, although Streight's enjoyment of this was considerably dimin-
ished by the fact that he did not know he had it. All the same, the nu-
merical odds were with him, three to two, whether he knew it or not, and
what was more they grew as he moved eastward past well-stocked farms
[ i8z ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
untouched by war till now. When his mules gave out, as they frequently
did, he could remount his men by seizing others; whereas for Forrest,
coming along in the raiders' clean-swept wake, a broken-down horse
meant a lost rider. Another tactical advantage accruing to the blue com-
mander was that whenever he chose to make a stand he could not only
select the terrain best suited for defensive fighting, he could also lay
small-scale ambushes by which a rear-guard handful could shock the pur-
suers with surprise fire, forcing them to halt and deploy, then hurry
ahead to rejoin the main body before the attack was delivered. Streight
was altogether aware of this advantage, and used it first within three
miles of the point where he heard the opening boom of guns. Selecting a
position along a wooded ridge, with a boggy creek protecting his left
and a steep ravine his right, he sent back word for the rear-guard Ala-
bama Unionists, still skirmishing in Day's Gap, to retreat on the run
through the newly drawn line and thus draw the graybacks into ambush.
It worked to perfection. As the pursuers rode fast to overtake the home-
made Yankees, the waiting bluecoats rose from the underbrush and shat-
tered the head of the column with massed volleys. When reinforcements
came up to repeat the attempt, this time advancing a section of artillery to
counterbalance the two 12 -pounder mountain howitzers firing rapidly
from the ridge, the defenders followed up a second repulse with a coun-
terattack and captured both of the guns, then drew off, leaving the rebels
rocked back on their heels.
Forrest was thrown into a towering rage by the loss of his guns
and the fact that the raiders had won first honors and drawn first blood —
including that of his brother, Captain William Forrest, who had led his
company of scouts in the charge and had been unhorsed by a bullet that
broke his thigh — but by the time he got his troopers back into line for
a third attack, the bluecoats had pulled out. He pushed on, closing again
on their rear at Crooked Creek, where Streight again formed line of bat-
tle, six miles beyond the first. Here, from about an hour before dark until
10 o'clock that night, the two forces engaged in a fire fight. Determined
to give the raiders no rest, Forrest kept forcing the issue by moonlight,
and his orders, though brief, were conclusive: "Shoot at everything blue
and keep up the scare." Finally, with one flank about to crumple,
Streight "resumed the march," leaving the two captured guns behind
him, spiked. At midnight, then again two hours later, he laid ambushes,
but Forrest kept crowding him and did not call a halt till daylight, when
he paused long enough to water and feed the horses and give the weaker
ones an opportunity to catch up. Streight meanwhile pushed on to the
outskirts of Blountsville, which he reached about midmorning of May
Day, having covered forty-three miles over mountain roads since the
skirmishing began soon after sunrise yesterday. However, before his men
could finish feeding their weary mounts, Forrest once more was driving
in the pickets, and the two commands went through the town in a whirl
Unhappy New Year [ 183 ]
of dust and gunsmoke, shooting at one another over the ears of their
horses or the cruppers of their mules.
So it went, all that day and the next, eastward another fifty miles,
then northeastward along the near bank of the Coosa River, with
Streight making stands behind the east fork of the Black Warrior River
and Big Will's Creek, laying ambushes in the heavily wooded valley off
the southern end of Lookout Mountain, and burning the only bridge
across Black Creek, just short of Gadsden. Forrest kept the pressure on,
however. He got over the last-named obstacle by using a ford that was
shown him, under fire from the opposite bank, by a sixteen-year-old
farm girl, Emma Sanson — in appreciation of whose courage he took
time and pains to leave an autograph note of thanks:
Hed Quaters in Sadie
May 2 1863
My highest regardes to miss Ema Sanson for hir Gallant con-
duct while my posse was skirmishing with the Federals across
Black Creek near Gadesden Allah ama.
N. B. Forrest
Brig Genl Comding N. Ala —
and pressed on after the blue raiders, engaging them in another running
fight through Gadsden and beyond, where they soon were forced to
make another stand. He had the advantage of singleness of purpose, plus
the chance to give his men a breather when he chose, pursuing as it
were in shifts, some resting while others kept up the chase; whereas
Streight not only had to keep fending off the myriad and apparently in-
exhaustible graybacks hot on his trail — a profitless business at best
— but also had to keep pushing on toward the accomplishment of his
mission in North Georgia. After nearly three days of riding and fight-
ing, and two nights without rest, his men were falling asleep on mule-
back and even in line of battle whenever he called a halt to lay another
ambush or defend another opportune position, and now that his pur-
suers had avoided delay at Black Creek, thanks to Emma Sanson, he faced
another sleepless night. "It now became evident to me," he later re-
ported, "that our only hope was in crossing the river at Rome and de-
stroying the bridge, which would delay Forrest a day or two and give
us time to collect horses and mules and allow the command a little time
to sleep, without which it was impossible to proceed."
Accordingly, when he reached Turkeytown, eight miles beyond
Gadsden, he selected two hundred of the best-mounted men and sent
them ahead to seize the bridge across the Oostanaula River at Rome
and hold it until the main body came up. At sunset, four miles farther
along, he formed again for battle "as it was impossible to continue the
march through the night without feeding and resting." In the course of
the preliminary skirmish, however, he discovered that much of the men's
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1863
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ammunition had been ruined by dampness and abrasion. Instead of risk-
ing another general engagement under these circumstances, he decided
to disengage — "unobserved, if possible" — and lay another ambush in
a thicket half a mile ahead. When Forrest detected the ruse and began to
move out on the flank, Streight had to pull back and make a run for it in
the dusk, beginning another horrendous night march with men who
by now had the look of somnambulists and mules that were "jaded,
tender-footed, and worn out." But the worst development, so far, was
encountered when they reached the Cedar Bluff ferry across the Chat-
tooga River, just above its confluence with the Coosa. The 200-man
detail had passed this way a short while back, headed for Rome, but had
neglected to post a guard: with the result that some citizens had spirited
the ferryboat away, leaving Streight with the sort of problem he had
been leaving Forrest all along.
Yet he was nothing if not persevering. Turning left, he plodded
wearily through the darkness along the west bank of the Chattooga,
intent on reaching a bridge near Gaylesville, half a dozen miles up-
stream. Whereupon — while Forrest was giving his troopers a few hours'
sleep: all but one squadron, which he instructed to stay on the trail of
the raiders and "devil them all night" — Streight and his muleback
soldiers entered the worst of their several Deep South nightmares.
The way led through extensive "choppings" where the timber had been
cut and burned to furnish charcoal for nearby Round Mountain Furnace,
which in turn supplied the Rome foundry with pig iron. Though the
raiders succeeded in wrecking part of the smelting plant — the one sub-
stantial blow they struck in the course of their long ride across Ala-
bama — they paid a high price in the extra miles they covered in or-
der to bring it within reach. Lost in a maze of wagon trails, segments of
the blue column were scattered about the choppings until daylight
showed them the way back to the river and then to the bridge, which
they crossed and burned in their wake. Wobbly with fatigue, animals
and men alike, they staggered along the opposite bank, again to the
Unhappy New Year [ 185 ]
vicinity of Cedar Bluff, then turned eastward five more miles to the
Lawrence plantation, which they reached about 9 a.m. The Georgia
line was only five miles ahead, with Rome barely another fifteen miles
beyond, but Streight had no choice except to drop from exhaustion or
halt for rest and food. He had no sooner begun the distribution of ra-
tions, however, than the graybacks once more were driving in his
pickets.
Forrest had swum the Chattooga at sunup, using long ropes to
drag two of his guns across, submerged on the sandy bottom. Down
to six hundred men by now, he was outnumbered worse than two to
one and knew it, even if Streight did not. All along he had had to avoid
the obvious maneuver of circling the flank of the blue column in order
to block its path; for in that case, goaded by desperation, the Fed-
erals might have run right over him, swamping his line with the sheer
weight of numbers. Even now, in fact, though his troopers were con-
siderably refreshed by the sleep they had enjoyed while the bluecoats
were stumbling around in the choppings south of Gaylesville, he pre-
ferred not to risk a pitched battle if he could accomplish his purpose
otherwise. So he did as he had done before, in similar circumstances: sent
forward, under a flag of truce, an officer with a note demanding im-
mediate surrender "to stop the further and useless effusion of olood."
Streight, who had had to wake his men to put them into line of
battle — where they promptly fell asleep again, with bullets whistling
overhead — replied that he was by no means ready to give up, but that,
sharing Forrest's humane views as to unnecessary bloodshed, he was will-
ing to parley. He insisted further, when the guns fell silent and the two
commanders met between the lines, that he would not even consider lay-
ing down his arms unless his opponent would prove that he had an over-
whelming superiority of numbers. Forrest declined to show his hand in
any such manner; but all the while, acting under previous instructions,
the officer in charge of the section of artillery kept bringing his two
guns over a distant rise in the road, then back under cover and over the
rise again, producing for the benefit of Streight, who had been placed so
as to watch all this over Forrest's shoulder, the appearance of a stream of
guns arriving at intervals to bolster the rebel line. "Name of God!"
Streight cried at last. "How many guns have you got? There's fifteen
I've counted already." Forrest looked around casually. "I reckon that's
all that has kept up," he said. So Streight went back to his own lines
for a conference with his regimental commanders, most of whom, as he
later reported, "had already expressed the opinion that, unless we could
reach Rome and cross the river before the enemy came up with us again,
we should be compelled to surrender." At this juncture, a messenger
arrived from the 200-man detail sent ahead the night before and reported
that the bridge across the Oostanaula was strongly held by rebel troops
[i86] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
in Rome. That did it; Streight returned and announced his willingness to
surrender. Forrest replied, "Stack your arms right along there, Colonel,
and march your men away down that hollow."
The total bag, including the 200-man detail picked up on the way
into Rome that same Sunday afternoon as it returned from its fruitless
mission, was 1466 bluecoats, and though they had been feared as would-
be conquerors — a fear which had thrown the Rome citizenry into such
a panic of feverish activity that the Federal scouts, observing from across
the Oostanaula, had mistaken the milling for preparedness — they were
welcomed and fed generously as captives. Forrest's own entrance was
the occasion for the presentation of a horseshoe wreath of flowers, hail-
ing him as the town's deliverer, and a fine saddle horse, which helped
to make up for the two that had been shot from under him in the course
of the long chase. Then began a famous celebration, attended by what
one matron called "just a regular wholesale cooking of hams and
shoulders and all sorts of provisions" to relieve the hunger pangs of
the gray heroes. Nor were the prisoners excluded from this bounty; "We
were quite willing to feed the Yankees when they had no guns," she
added. But the Roman holiday was cut short on the night of May 5 by
the arrival of word that another column of blue raiders had left Tus-
cumbia that afternoon, headed southeast for Jasper and possibly Mont-
gomery. Forrest and his men were back in the saddle next morning.
Riding once more through Gadsden the following day, they learned
that the rumor was groundless, Dodge having returned to Corinth; so
they swung north, recovering the third regiment en route, to resume
their accustomed work in Tennessee. On May 10, however — an-
other Sunday — Forrest was handed orders from Bragg, instructing him
to have his brigade continue its present march but for him to report in
person to army headquarters, where he would receive, along with a
recommendation for promotion to major general, appointment to the
command Van Dorn had vacated three days ago, when he came under
the Spring Hill doctor's pistol.
X 5 X
Along toward sunset of January 28, completing a 400-mile overnight
trip from Memphis down the swollen, tawny, mile-wide Mississippi,
a stern-wheel packet warped in for a west-bank landing at Young's Point,
just opposite the base of the long hairpin bend in front of Vicksburg
and within half a dozen air-line miles of the guns emplaced along the lip
of the tall clay bluff the city stood on. First off the steamboat, once the
deck hands had swung out the stageplank, was a slight man, rather
stooped, five feet eight inches in height and weighing less than a hun-
dred and forty pounds, who walked with a peculiar gait, shoulders
Unhappy New Year [ 187 ]
hunched "a little forward of the perpendicular," as one observer re-
marked, so that each step seemed to arrest him momentarily in the act
of pitching on his face. He had on a plain blue suit and what the same
reporter called "an indifferently good 'Kossuth' hat, with the top bat-
tered in close to his head." Forty years old, he looked considerably older,
partly because of the crow's-feet crinkling the outer corners of his eyes
— the result of intense concentration, according to some, while others
identified them as whiskey lines, plainly confirming rumors of over-
indulgence and refuting the protestations of friends that he never
touched the stuff — but mainly because of the full, barely grizzled, light
brown beard, close-cropped to emphasize the jut of a square jaw and
expose a mouth described as being "of the letterbox shape," clamped
firmly shut below a nose that surprised by contrast, being delicately
chiseled, and blue-gray eyes that gave the face a somewhat out-of-
balance look because one was set a trifle lower than the other. Wearing
neither sword nor sash, and indeed no trappings of rank at all, except for
the twin-starred straps of a major general tacked to the weathered
shoulders of his coat, he was reading a newspaper as he came down the
plank to the Louisiana shore, and he chewed the unlighted stump of a
cigar, which not only seemed habitual but also appeared to be a more
congruous facial appendage than the surprisingly aquiline nose.
"There's General Grant," an Illinois soldier told a comrade as
they stood watching this unceremonious arrival.
"I guess not," the other replied, shaking his head. "That fellow
don't look like he has the ability to command a regiment, much less an
army."
It was not so much that Grant was unexpected; he had a habit of
turning up unannounced at almost any time and place within the limits
of his large department. The trouble was that he bore such faint re-
semblance to his photographs, which had been distributed widely ever
since Donelson and which, according to an acquaintance, made him look
like a "burly beef-contractor." In person he resembled at best a badly
printed copy of one of those photos, with the burliness left out. Con-
versely, the lines of worry — if his friends were right and that was what
they were — were more pronounced, as was perhaps only natural when
he had more to fret about than the discomfort of holding still for a
camera. Just now, for instance, there was John McClernand, who per-
sisted in considering the river force a separate command and continued
to issue general orders under the heading, "Headquarters, Army of the
Mississippi." Before Grant had been downriver two days he received a
letter from McClernand, noting "that orders are being issued directly
from your headquarters directly to army corps commanders, and not
through me." This could only result in "dangerous confusion," McCler-
nand protested, "as I am invested, by order of the Secretary of War, in-
dorsed by the President, and by order of the President communicated to
[188] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
you by the General-in-Chief, with the command of all the forces oper-
ating on the Mississippi River. ... If different views are entertained by
you, then the question should be immediately referred to Washington,
and one or the other, or both of us, relieved. One thing is certain; two
generals cannot command this army, issuing independent and direct or-
ders to subordinate officers, and the public service be promoted."
Grant agreed at least with the final sentence — which he later
paraphrased and sharpened into a maxim: "Two commanders on the
same field are always one too many" — but he found the letter as a whole
"more in the nature of a reprimand than a protest." The fact was, it ap-
proached outright insubordination, although not quite close enough to
afford occasion for the pounce Grant was crouched for. "I overlooked
it, as I believed, for the good of the service," he subsequently wrote. By
way of reply, instead of direct reproof, he issued orders announcing that
he was assuming personal command of the river expedition and instruct-
ing all corps commanders, including McClernand, to report henceforth
directly to him; McClernand's corps, he added by way of a stinger,
would garrison Helena and other west-bank points well upriver. Out-
raged at being the apparent victim of a squeeze play, the former congress-
man responded by asking whether, "having projected the Mississippi
River expedition, and having been by a series of orders assigned to the
command of it," he was thus to be "entirely withdrawn from it." Grant
replied to the effect that he would do as he saw fit, since "as yet I have
seen no order to prevent my taking command in the field." McClernand
acquiesced, as he said, "for the purpose of avoiding a conflict of authority
in the presence of the enemy," but requested that the entire matter be
referred to their superiors in Washington, "not only in respect for the
President and Secretary, under whose authority I claim the right to
command the expedition, but in justice to myself as its author and actual
promoter." Grant accordingly forwarded the correspondence to Hal-
leck, saying that he had assumed command only because he lacked con-
fidence in McClernand. "I respectfully submit the whole matter to the
General-in-Chief and the President," he ended his indorsement. "What-
ever the decision made by them, I will cheerfully submit to and give a
hearty support."
In bucking all this up to the top echelon Grant was on even safer
ground than he supposed. Just last week McClernand had received, in
reply to a private letter to Lincoln charging Halleck "with wilful con-
tempt of superior authority" because of his so-far "interference" in the
matter, "and with incompetency for the extraordinary and vital func-
tions with which he is charged," a note in which the President told him
plainly: "I have too many family controversies (so to speak) already on
my hands to voluntarily, or so long as I can avoid it, take up another.
You are now doing well — well for the country, and well for yourself
— much better than you could possibly be if engaged in open war with
Unhappy New Year [ 189 ]
General Halleck. Allow me to beg that tor your sake, for my sake,
and for the country's sake, you give your whole ' attention to the better
work." So it was: McClernand already had his answer before he filed his
latest appeal. Lincoln would not interfere. The army was Grant's, and
would remain Grant's, to do with as he saw fit in accomplishing what
Lincoln called "the better work."
His problem was how best to go about it. Now that he had in-
spected at first hand the obstacles to success in this swampy region,
much of which was at present under water and would continue to be so
for months to come, he could see that the wisest procedure, from a
strategic point of view, "would have been to go back to Memphis,
establish that as a base of supplies, fortify it so that the storehouses could
be held by a small garrison, and move from there along the line of the
[Mississippi & Tennessee] railroad, repairing as we advanced to the Yalo-
busha," from which point he would have what he now so gravely lacked:
a straight, high-ground shot at the city on the rebel bluff. So he wrote,
years later, having gained the advantage of hindsight. For the present,
however, he saw certain drawbacks to the retrograde movement, which
in his judgment far outweighed the strictly tactical advantages. For one
thing, the November elections had gone against the party that stood for
all-out prosecution of the war, and this had turned out to be a warning
of future trouble, with the croakers finding encouragement in the
reverse. There was the question of morale, not only in the army itself,
but also on the home front, where even a temporary withdrawal would
be considered an admission that Vicksburg was too tough a nut to crack.
At this critical juncture, both temporal and political, with voluntary en-
listment practically at a standstill throughout much of the North and
the new conscription laws already meeting sporadic opposition, such a
discouragement might well prove fatal to the cause. "It was my judg-
ment at the time," Grant subsequently wrote, "that to make a back-
ward movement as long as that from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be
interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for the preservation of
the Union, as a defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions
ensue, and the power to capture and punish deserters lost. There was
nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory. This was
in my mind from the moment I took command in person at Young's
Point."
In his own mind at least that much was settled. He would stay.
But this decision only brought him face to face with the basic problem,
as he put it, of how "to secure a footing upon dry ground on the east
side of the river, from which the troops could operate against Vicksburg
. . . without an apparent retreat." Aside from a frontal assault, either
against the bluff itself or against the heights flanking it on the north —
which Sherman, even if he had done nothing more last month, had
proved would not only be costly in the extreme but would also be fruit-
[i 9 o] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
less, and which Grant said "was never contemplated; certainly not by
me" — the choice lay between whether to cross upstream or down,
above or below the rebel bastion. One seemed about as impossible as the
other. Above, the swampy, fifty-mile-wide delta lay in his path, practi-
cally roadless and altogether malarial. Even if he were able to slog his
foot soldiers across it, which was doubtful, it was worse than doubt-
ful whether he would be able to establish and maintain a vital supply
line by that route. On the other hand, to attempt a crossing below
the city seemed even more suicidal, since this would involve a run past
frowning batteries, not only at Vicksburg itself, but also at Warrenton
and Grand Gulf, respectively seven and thirty-five miles downriver.
Armored gunboats — as Farragut had demonstrated twice the year be-
fore, first up, then down, with his heavily gunned salt-water fleet —
might run this fiery gauntlet, taking their losses as they went, but brittle-
skinned transports and supply boats would be quite another matter, con-
sidering the likelihood of their being reduced to kindling in short order,
with much attendant loss of life and goods. ... In short, the choice
seemed to lie between two impossibilities, flanking a third which had
been rejected before it was even considered.
Two clear advantages Grant had, however, by way of helping to
offset the gloom, and both afforded him comfort under the strain. One
was the unflinching support of his superiors; the other was an ample sup-
ply of troops, either downstream with him or else on call above. "The
eyes and hopes of the whole country are now directed to your army,"
Halleck presently would tell him. "In my opinion, the opening of the
Mississippi River will be to us of more advantage than the capture of
forty Richmonds. We shall omit nothing which we can do to assist you."
Already, before Grant left Memphis, Old Brains had urged him: "Take
everything you can dispense with in Tennessee and [North] Mississippi.
We must not fail in this if within human power to accomplish it." His
total effective strength within his department, as of late January, was
approximately 103,000 officers and men, and of these, as a result of aban-
doning railroads and other important rear-area installations, Grant had
been able to earmark just over half for the downriver expedition: 32,000
in the two corps under McClernand and Sherman, already at hand, and
15,000 in McPherson's corps, filing aboard transports southbound from
Memphis even now. In addition to these 47,000 — the official total,
"present for duty, equipped," was 46,994 — another 15,000 were stand-
ing by under Hurlbut, who commanded the fourth corps, ready to fol-
low McPherson as soon as they got the word. Just now, though, there
not only was no need for them; there actually was no room. Because of
the high water and the incessant rain overflowing the bayous, there was
no place to camp on the low-lying west bank except upon the levee,
with the result that the army was strung out along it for more than fifty
miles, north and south, under conditions that were anything but healthy.
Unhappy New Year [ 191 J
As morale declined, the sick-lists lengthened; desertions were up; funerals
were frequent. "Go any day down the levee," one recruit wrote home,
"and you could see a squad or two of soldiers burying a companion, until
the levee was nearly full of graves and the hospitals still full of sick.
And those that were not down sick were not well by a considerable."
Pneumonia was the chief killer, with smallpox a close second. Some regi-
ments soon had more men down than up. The food was bad. Paymasters
did not venture south of Helena, which increased the disaffection, and
the rumor mills were grinding as never before. When the mails were held
up, as they frequently were, it was reported from camp to camp, like
a spark moving along a fifty-mile train of powder, that the war was over
but that the news was being kept from the troops "for fear we could
not be held in subjection if we knew the state of affairs." They took out
at least a share of their resentment on such rebel property as came within
their reach. "Farms disappear, houses are burned and plundered, and
every living animal killed and eaten," Sherman informed his senator
brother. "General officers make feeble efforts to stay the disorder, but it
is idle." Then when the mail came through at last they could read in
anti-administration newspapers of the instability and incompetence of
the West Pointers responsible for their welfare, including Sherman —
"He hates reporters, foams at the mouth when he sees them, snaps at
them; sure symptoms of a deep-seated mania" — and the army com-
mander himself: "The confidence of the army is greatly shaken in Gen-
eral Grant, who hitherto undoubtedly depended more upon good
fortune than upon military ability for success."
The wet season would continue for months, during which all
these problems would be with him. As Grant said in retrospect, "There
seemed to be no possibility of a land movement before the end of March
or later." Yet "it would not do to lie idle all this time. The effect would
be demoralizing to the troops and injurious to their health. Friends in the
North would have grown more and more insolent in their gibes and de-
nunciations of the cause and those engaged in it." So he launched (or
rather, continued) what he called "a series of experiments," designed
not only "to consume time," but also to serve the triple purpose of di-
verting "the attention of the enemy, of my troops, and of the public
generally." Two failures were already behind him in his campaign
against Vicksburg: the advance down the Mississippi Central and the
assault on the Chickasaw Bluffs, both of which had ended in retreat.
Now there followed five more failures, bringing the total to seven. Look-
ing back on them later he was to say — quite untruthfully, as the
record would show — that he had "never felt great confidence that
any of the experiments resorted to would prove successful," though he
had always been "prepared to take advantage of them in case they did."
The third of these seven "experiments" — the attempt, by means
of a canal across the base of the tongue of land in front of Vicksburg, to
[192] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1863
divert the channel of the river and thus permit the column of warships,
transports, and supply boats to bypass the batteries on the bluff — had
been in progress ever since the return of the army from Arkansas Post,
but Sherman, who had assigned a thousand men a day to the digging
job, was not sanguine of results. "The river is about full and threatens
to drown us out," he was complaining as he sloshed about in a waste
of gumbo, with the rain coming down harder every week. "The ground
is wet, almost water, and it is impossible for wagons to haul stores from
the river to camp, or even horses to wallow through." Conversely, as
if to preserve a balance of optimism, Grant's expectations rose with the
passage of time. In early March he wired Halleck: "The canal is near
completion. ... I will have Vicksburg this month, or fail in the attempt."
But this was the signal for disaster. "If the river rises 8 feet more, we
would have to take to the trees," Sherman had said, and presently it
did. The dam at the upper end of the cut gave way, and the water, in-
stead of scouring out a channel — as had been expected, or anyhow in-
tended — spread all over the lower end of the peninsula, forcing the
evacuation of the troops from their flooded camps, with the resultant
sacrifice of many horses and much equipment. "This little affair of ours
here on Vicksburg Point is labor lost," Sherman reported in disgust,
announcing the unceremonious end of the third experiment.
But Grant already had a fourth in progress. Fifty-odd miles
above Vicksburg, just west of the river and south of the Arkansas line,
lay Lake Providence, once a bend of the Mississippi but long since
abandoned by the Old Man in the course of one of his cataclysmic whims.
Though the lake now was land-locked, separated moreover from the
river by a levee, Bayou Baxter drained it sluggishly westward into Bayou
Macon, which in turn flowed into the Tensas River, just over a hundred
winding miles to the south. Still farther down, the Tensas joined the
Ouachita to form the Black, and the Black ran into the Red, which
entered the Mississippi a brief stretch above Port Hudson. Despite its
roundabout meandering, a distance of some 470 miles, this route seemed
to Grant to offer a chance, once the levee had been breached to
afford access to Lake Providence and the intricate system of hinterland
bayous and rivers, for a naval column to avoid not only the Vicksburg
batteries but also those below at Warrenton and Grand Gulf. Accord-
ingly, two days after his arrival at Young's Point, he sent an engineer
detail to look into the possibilities indicated on the map, and the follow-
ing week, in early February, he went up to see for himself. It seemed to
him that "a little digging" — "less than one-quarter," he said, of what
Sherman had done already on the old canal — "will connect the Missis-
sippi and Lake, and in all probability will wash a channel in a short
time." If so, the way would be open for a bloodless descent, at the end
of which he would join Banks for a combined attack on Port Hudson,
and once that final bastion had been reduced the Confederacy would
[i 9 4l THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
have been cut in two and the Great Lakes region would have recovered
its sorely missed trade connection with the Gulf. Impressed by this vista,
Grant sent at once for McPherson to come down with a full division and
get the project started without delay. "This bids fair to be the most
practicable route for turning Vicksburg," he told him in the body of
the summons.
He could scarcely have assigned the task to an officer better pre-
pared to undertake it. McPherson, who was thirty-three and a fellow
Ohioan, had been top man in the West Point class of '53 and had re-
turned to the academy as an engineering instructor; he also had worked
on river and harbor projects in the peacetime army, and had served at
the time of Shiloh, when he was a lieutenant colonel, as chief engineer
on Grant's staff. His advancement since then had been rapid, though
not without some grousing, on the part of line officers he had passed on
his way up the ladder, that a man who had never led troops in a major
action should be given command of a corps. Sherman, on the other hand,
considered him the army's "best hope for a great soldier," not except-
ing Grant and himself; "if he lives," he added. A bright-eyed, pleasant-
faced young man, alternately bland and impulsive, McPherson came
quickly down from Memphis with one of his two divisions and set to
work at once. Without waiting for the levee to be cut, he horsed a small
towboat overland, launched it on the lake, and got aboard for a recon-
naissance — with the result that his high hopes took a sudden drop. The
Bayou Baxter outlet led through an extensive cypress brake, and what
could be found of its channel, which was but little at the present flood
stage, was badly choked with stumps and snags that threatened to knock
or rip the bottom out of whatever came their way. He put his men to
work with underwater saws, but it was clear that at best the job would
be a long one, if not impossible. Besides, Grant now saw that, even if a
passage could be opened in time to be of use, he would never be able
to get together enough light-draft boats to carry his army down to the
Red River anyhow. McPherson and his staff meanwhile enjoyed some-
thing of a holiday, taking a regimental band aboard the little steamer
for moonlight excursions, to and from the landing at one of the lakeside
plantation houses which turned out to have a well-stocked cellar. Sol-
diers too found relaxation in this quiet backwater of the war, mainly in
fishing, what time they were not taking turns on the underwater saws.
By early March it was more or less obvious that nothing substantial was
going to come of this fourth attempt to take or bypass Vicksburg,
but Grant declared, later and rather laconically: "I let the work go
on, believing employment was better than idleness for the men."
All seven of these experiments, four of which by now had gone
by the board, anticipated some degree of co-operation from the navy.
For the most part, indeed, they were classically amphibious, depending
Unhappy New Year [ 195 ]
as much on naval as on army strength and skill. But if Porter, whatever
his other shortcomings — one acquaintance called him "by all odds the
greatest humbug of the war" — was not the kind of man to withhold
needed help, neither was he the kind to be satisfied with a supporting role
if he saw even an outside chance at stardom. And he believed he saw one
now: had seen it, in fact, from the outset, and had already made his
solo entrance on the stage. One of the two main reasons for attempt-
ing the reduction of Vicksburg and Port Hudson — in addition, that is,
to opening a pathway to New Orleans and the Gulf — was to choke
off rebel traffic along and across the nearly three hundred miles of river
that flowed between them, particularly that segment of it tangent to the
mouth of Red River, the main artery of trade connecting the goods-
rich Transmississippi's far-west region with the principal Confederate
supply depots in Georgia and Virginia. To accomplish this, the admiral
perceived, it would not be absolutely necessary to capture either of
the two bastions anchoring opposite ends of the long stretch of river.
All that was needed, really, was to control what lay between them, and
this could be done by sending warships down to knock out whatever
vestiges of the rebel fleet remained and to establish a sort of internal
blockade by patrolling all possible crossings. In early February, ac-
cordingly, while Sherman's men were still digging their way across soggy
Vicksburg Point and Grant was steaming upriver for a preliminary
look at cypress-choked Lake Providence, Porter gave orders which put
his plan in the way of execution.
First off, this would require a run past the batteries on the bluff, and
he gave the assignment to the steam ram Queen of the West, which had
done it twice before, back in July, in an unsuccessful attempt to come
to grips with the Arkansas. She was one of the navy's best-known
vessels, having led the ram attack at the Battle of Memphis, where she
had been commanded by her designer and builder, Colonel Charles
Ellet, Jr., who had died of the only wound inflicted on a Northerner in
that one-sided triumph. His son, nineteen-year-old Colonel Charles R.
Ellet — who, as a medical cadet, had gone ashore in a rowboat, accom-
panied by three seamen, to complete the Memphis victory by raising the
Stars and Stripes over the post office — had succeeded his uncle, Briga-
dier General A. W. Ellet, who had succeeded the first Ellet as com-
mander of the ram fleet, as skipper of the Queen. Patched up from the
two poundings she had taken from Vicksburg's high-perched guns, and
fitted out now with guns of her own for the first time — previously she
had depended solely on her punch — she made her run at daybreak,
February 4, taking an even dozen hits, including two in the hull but
none below the water line, and pulled up at a battery Sherman had
established on the west bank, just around the bend, for the protection of
his diggers. Above the town, two nights later, Porter set adrift a barge
loaded with 20,000 bushels of coal, which made it downstream on
[196] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
schedule and without mishap, apparently not having been spotted by
the lookouts on the bluff. "This gives the ram nearly coal enough to last
a month," the admiral proudly informed Secretary Welles, "in which
time she can commit great havoc, if no accident happens to her."
Though at first it seemed an unnecessary flourish — he knew
the rebels had nothing afloat to match the Queen — that final reserva-
tion was prophetic. Setting out on the night of February 10, accom-
panied by an ex-Confederate steamboat, the DeSoto, which had been
captured by the army below Vicksburg, Ellet began his career as a com-
merce raider in fine style, slipping past the Warrenton batteries unde-
tected and going to work at once on enemy shipping by destroying
skiffs and flatboats on both banks. He burned or commandeered hun-
dreds of bales of cotton, taking some aboard for "armoring" the wheel-
house, destroyed supply trains heavily loaded with grain and salt pork
being sent to collection points, and in reprisal for a sniper bullet, which
struck one of his sailors in the leg, burned no less than three plantation
houses, together with their outbuildings, apparently undismayed even
when one planter's daughter sang "The Bonny Blue Flag" full in his
face as the flames crackled. His greatest single prize, however, was the
corn-laden packet Era No. j, which he captured after passing Natchez
and entering the Red River. But at that point, or just beyond it —
seventy-five miles from the mouth of the river and with Alexandria in a
turmoil less than half that far ahead — he and the Queen ran out of
luck. On Valentine's Day, approaching Gordon's Landing, where a
battery of guns had been reported, the ram stuck fast on a mud flat and
was taken suddenly under fire by enemy gunners who yelled with de-
light at thus being offered a stationary target at a range of four hundred
yards. In short order the boat's engine controls were smashed, her
escape-pipe shot away, her boiler fractured. As she disappeared in hiss-
ing clouds of steam — one survivor later claimed to have avoided scald-
ing his lungs because "I had sufficient presence of mind to cram the
tail of my coat into my mouth" — officers and men began to tumble
bales of cotton over the rail, then leap after them into the river, cling-
ing to them in hope of reaching the DeSoto or the Era, a mile below. By
now it was every man for himself, including the wounded, and the
youthful skipper was not among the last to abandon the Queen in favor
of a downstream ride astride a bale of cotton.
Picked up by the DeSoto, Ellet and the others were alarmed to
discover that in the excitement she had unshipped both rudders and be-
come unmanageable; so they set her afire and abandoned her, too, in
favor of the more recently captured Era. Their career as raiders had
lasted just four days. From now on, their only concern was escape,
which seemed unlikely because of reports that the Confederates had at
Alexandria a high-speed steamboat, the William H. Webb, which would
surely be after them as soon as the news arrived upriver. She mounted
Unhappy New Year [ 197 ]
only one gun, they had heard, and would never have dared to tackle
the Queen, but now the tables were more or less turned; the pursuers
became the pursued. "With a sigh for the poor fellows left behind,
and a hope that our enemies would be merciful,'' a survivor wrote, "the
prow of the Era was turned toward the Mississippi." They made it by
daylight, after a race through stormy darkness unrelieved except for
blinding flashes of lightning, and started north up the big river, heav-
ing overboard all possible incidentals, including rations, in an attempt to
coax more speed from their unarmed boat. Next morning, February 1 6,
just below Natchez, with the Webb reportedly closing fast on their
stern, they were startled to see an enormous, twin-stacked vessel bear-
ing down on them from dead ahead. Their dismay at the prospect of be-
ing ground between two millstones was relieved, however, when the
lookout identified her as the Indianola. The latest addition to the
ironclad fleet and the pride of the Federal inland-waters navy, she
mounted two great 11 -inch smoothbores forward and a pair of 9-inch
rifles amidships, casemated between her towering sidewheel-boxes, while
for power she boasted four engines, driving twin screws in addition to
her paddles, and she had brought two large barges of coal along, one
lashed to starboard and one to port, to insure a long-term stay on the
previously rebel-held 250-mile stretch of river above Port Hudson.
Porter had sent her down past the Vicksburg batteries three nights ago,
intending for her to support the Queen and thus, as he said, "make
matters doubly sure."
Learning from Ellet that the Queen had been lost, Lieutenant
Commander George Brown, captain of the Indianola, decided at once to
proceed downriver, accompanied by the Era. Presently they sighted the
Webb, in hot pursuit, and once more the tables were turned; for the
Webb took one quick look at the iron-clad monster and promptly made
use of her superior speed to withdraw before coming within range of
those 1 1 -inch guns, two short-falling shots from which only served to
hurry her along, as one observer said, "for all the world like a frightened
racehorse." Brown gave chase as far as the mouth of Red River, up
which the rebel vessel disappeared, but there he called a halt, Porter
having warned him not to venture up that stream without an experi-
enced pilot, which he lacked. While Brown continued on patrol, guard-
ing against a re-emergence of the Webb, Ellet took off northward in the
Era with the unpleasant duty of informing Porter that he had lost the
Queen. Two days later, still on patrol at the mouth of the Red, Brown
received astounding news. The Confederates had resurrected the Queen
of the West, patching up her punctured hull and repairing her fractured
steam drum. Even now, in company with the skittish Webb and two
cottonclad boats whose upper decks were crowded with sharpshooters,
she was preparing to come out after the Indianola. Brown thought
it over and decided to retire.
[198] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
He would have done better to leave without taking time to think
it over; the fuze was burning shorter than he knew. However, he was in
for a fight in any event because of the two coal barges, which he knew
would decrease his upstream speed considerably, but which he was de-
termined to hold onto, despite the fact that the Indianola's bunkers were
chock-full. Partly this decision was the result of his ingrained peacetime
frugality, but mostly it was because he wanted to have plenty of fuel on
hand in case Porter complied with his request, forwarded by Ellet, that
another gunboat be sent downriver as a replacement for the Queen.
Brown left the mouth of the Red on Saturday, February 21, and
stopped for the night at a plantation landing up the Mississippi to take
on a load of cotton bales, which he stacked around the ironclad's low
main deck to make her less vulnerable to boarders. Next morning he
was off again in earnest, all four engines straining to offset the drag of
the two barges lashed alongside. He did not know how much of a head
start he had, but he feared it was not enough. In point of fact, it was even
less than he supposed; for the four-boat Confederate flotilla, including
the resurrected Queen, set out after him at about the same hour that
Sunday morning, ninety miles astern of the landing where the Indianola
had commandeered the cotton. The race was on.
It was not really much of a race. Major Joseph L. Brent, com-
manding the quartet of rebel warships, each of which was in the
charge of an army captain, could have overtaken Brown at almost
anytime Tuesday afternoon, the 24th, but he preferred to wait for dark-
ness, which would not only make the aiming of the ironclad's big guns
more difficult but would also give the Grand Gulf batteries a chance at
her as she went by. Held to a crawl though she was by the awkward
burden of her barges, the Indianola got past that danger without mishap;
but Brown could see the smoke from his pursuers' chimneys drawing
closer with every mile as the sun declined, and he knew that he was in
for a fight before it rose again. He also knew by now that no reinforcing
consort was going to join him from the fleet above Vicksburg, in spite
of which he held doggedly to his barges, counting on them to give
him fender protection from ram attacks. As darkness fell, moonless but
dusky with starlight, he cleared for action and kept half of his crew at
battle stations: "watch and watch," it was called. At 9.30 he passed New
Carthage, which put him within thirteen miles of the nearest west-
bank Union battery, but by that time the rebel boats were in plain sight.
Abreast of Palmyra Island, heading into Davis Bend — so called because
it flowed past the Confederate President's Brierfield Plantation —
Brown swung his iron prow around to face his pursuers at last, thus
bringing his heavy guns to bear and protecting his more vulnerable
stern.
As the Queen and the Webb came at him simultaneously, the
former in the lead, he fired an 11 -inch shell point-blank at each. Both
Unhappy New Year [ 199 ]
missed, and the Queen was on him, lunging in from port with such force
that the barge on that side was sliced almost in two. Emerging un-
scathed from this, except for the loss of the barge, which was cut
adrift to sink, the Indianola met the Webb bows on, with a crash that
knocked most of both crews off their feet and left the Confederate
with a gash in her bow extending from water line to keelson, while the
Federal was comparatively unhurt. Nevertheless the Webb backed off
and struck again, crushing the remaining barge so completely as to leave
it hanging by the lashings. Meanwhile the Queen, having run upstream a
ways to gain momentum, turned and came charging down, striking her
adversary just abaft the starboard wheelhouse, which was wrecked along
with the rudder on that side, and starting a number of leaks along the
shaft. Likewise the Webb, having gained momentum in the same fashion,
brought her broken nose down hard and fair on the crippled ironclad's
lightly armored stern, starting the timbers and causing the water to pour
in rapidly. All this time the Indianola had kept throwing shells into the
smoky darkness, left and right, but had scored only a single hit on the
Queen, which did no considerable damage to the boat herself though it
killed two and wounded four of her crew. Brown, having done his worst
with this one shot, was now in a hopeless condition, scarcely able to
steer and with both of his starboard engines flooded. After waiting a
while in midstream until the water had risen nearly to the grate-bars of
the ironclad's furnaces, planning thus to avoid her capture by making
sure that she would sink, he ran her hard into the more friendly west
bank and hauled down his colors just as the two cottonclads came along-
side, crowded with yelling rebels prepared for boarding. Quickly they
leaped down and attached two ropes by which the steamers could haul
the Indianola across the river to the Confederate-held east bank, barely
making it in time for her to sink in ten feet of water. As soon as they got
their prisoners ashore they went to work on the captured dreadnought,
intending to raise her, as they had raised the Queen of the West the
week before, for service under the Stars and Bars.
Though he had heard the heavy nighttime firing just downriver,
Porter did not know for certain what had happened until two days
later, when a seaman who had escaped from the Indianola during her
brief contact with the western bank came aboard his flagship Black
Hawk and gave him an eyewitness account of the tragedy. Coming as it
did on the heels of news of the loss of the Queen — which in turn had
been preceded, two months back, by the destruction of the Cairo — the
blow was hard, especially since it included the information that the
Queen had been taken over by the enemy and had played a leading
part in the defeat of her intended consort, which was now about to be
used in the same manner as soon as the rebels succeeded in getting her
afloat. What made it doubly hard, for Porter at any rate, was the con-
trast between his present gloom and his recent optimism. "If you open
[2oo] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
the Father of Waters," Assistant Navy Secretary G. A. Fox had wired
the acting rear admiral in response to reports of his progress just two
weeks ago, "you will at once be made an admiral; besides we will try for
a ribboned star Do your work up clean," Fox had added, "and the
public will never be in doubt who did it. The flaming army correspond-
ence misleads nobody. Keep cool, be very modest under great success,
as a contrast to the soldiers." At any rate, such strain as there had been
on Porter's modesty was removed by the awareness that all he had
really accomplished so far — aside from the capture of Arkansas Post,
which had had to be shared with the army — was the loss of three of
his best warships, two of which were now in enemy hands. What filled
his mind just now was the thought of what this newest-model ironclad,
the former pride of the Union fleet, could accomplish once she went
into action on the Confederate side. Supported as she would be by the
captured ram, she might well prove invincible in an upstream fight. In
fact, any attempt to challenge her en masse would probably add other
powerful units to the rebel flotilla of defected boats, since any disabled
vessel would be swept helplessly downstream in such an engagement.
Far from opening the Father of Waters, and gaining thereby a ribboned
star and the permanent rank of admiral, Porter could see that he would
be more likely to lose what had been won by his predecessors. Besides,
even if he had wanted to launch such an all-out attack, he had no gun-
boats in the vicinity of Vicksburg now; they had been sent far upriver
to co-operate in another of Grant's ill-fated amphibious experiments.
Porter was inventive in more ways than one, however, and his re-
sourcefulness now stood him in good stead. If he had no available iron-
clad, then he would build one — or anyhow the semblance of one. Or-
dering every man off the noncombatant vessels to turn to, he took an
old flat-bottomed barge, extended its length to three hundred feet by
use of rafts hidden behind false bulwarks, and covered it over with
flimsy decking to support a frame-and-canvas pilothouse and two huge
but empty paddle-wheel boxes. A casemate was mounted forward, with
a number of large-caliber logs protruding from its ports, and two
tall smokestacks were erected by piling barrels one upon another. As a
final realistic touch, after two abandoned skiffs were swung from unwork-
able davits, the completed dummy warship was given an all-over coat
of tar. Within twenty-four hours, at a reported cost of $8.63, the navy
had what appeared, at least from a distance, to be a sister ship of the
Indianola. Belching smoke from pots of burning tar and oakum installed in
her barrel stacks, she was set adrift the following night to make her run
past the Vicksburg batteries. They gave her everything they had, but to
no avail; her black armor seemingly impervious to damage, she glided
unscathed past the roaring guns, not even deigning to reply. At daybreak
she grounded near the lower end of Sherman's canal, and the diggers
pushed her off again with a cheer. As she resumed her course downriver,
Unhappy New Year [ 201 ]
the Queen of the West, coming up past Warrenton on a scout, spotted
the dark behemoth in the distance, bearing down with her guns run out
and her deck apparently cleared for action. The ram spun on her heel
and sped back to spread the alarm: whereupon — since neither the
Queen nor the broken-nosed Webb was in any condition for another
fight just yet — all four of the Confederate vessels made off southward
to avoid a clash with this second ironclad. Aboard the Indianola, still im-
mobile and now deserted by her new friends, the lieutenant in charge
of salvage operations was for holding onto her and fighting it out, de-
spite repeated orders for him to complete her destruction before she
could be recaptured. At a range of about two miles, the dreadnought
halted as if to look the situation over before closing in for the bloody
work she was bent on. Still the lieutenant held his ground until night-
fall, when he decided to comply with the instructions of his superiors.
After heaving the 9-inch rifles into the river, he laid the 1 i-inch smooth-
bores muzzle to muzzle and fired them with slow matches. When the
smoke from this had cleared, he came back and set fire to what was
left, burning the wreckage to the water line and ending the brief but
stormy career of the ironclad Indianola.
Next morning, seeing the black monster still in her former posi-
tion, some two miles upriver — one observer later described her as
"terrible though inert" — a party of Confederates went out in a row-
boat to investigate. Drawing closer they recognized her for the hoax she
was, and saw that she had come to rest on a mudbank. Nailed to her star-
board wheelhouse was a crudely lettered sign. "Deluded people, cave
in," it read.
"Then, too," Grant added, continuing the comment on his rea-
sons for keeping McPherson's men sawing away at the underwater
stumps and snags clogging the Bayou Baxter exit from Lake Providence
even after he knew that, in itself, the work was unlikely to produce any-
thing substantial, "it served as a cover for other efforts which gave a
better prospect of success." What he had in mind — in addition, that
is, to Sherman's canal, which was not to be abandoned until March —
was a fifth experimental project, whose starting point was four hundred
tortuous miles upriver from its intended finish atop the Vicksburg bluff.
In olden days, just south of Helena and on the opposite bank, a bayou
had afforded egress from the Mississippi; Yazoo Pass, it was called, be-
cause it connected eastward with the Coldwater River, which flowed
south into the Tallahatchie, which in turn combined with the Yalobusha,
farther down, to form the Yazoo. Steamboats once had plied this route
for trade with the planters of the delta hinterland. In fact, they still
steamed up and down this intricate chain of rivers, but only by entering
from below, through the mouth of the Yazoo River; for the state of
Mississippi had sealed off the northern entrance, five years before the
[ 202 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
war, by constructing across the mouth of Yazoo Pass a levee which
served to keep the low-lying cotton fields from going under water with
every rise of the big river. Now it was Grant's notion that perhaps all
he needed to do, in order to utilize this old peacetime trade route for his
wartime purpose, was cut the levee and send in gunboats to provide
cover for transports, which then could be unloaded on high ground —
well down the left bank of the Yazoo but short of Haines Bluff, whose
fortifications blocked an ascent of that river from below — and thus, by
forcing the outnumbered defenders to come out into the open for a
fight which could only result in their defeat, take Vicksburg from the
rear. Accordingly, at the same time he ordered McPherson down from
Memphis to Lake Providence, he sent his chief topographical engineer,
Lieutenant Colonel James H. Wilson, to inspect and report on the possi-
bility of launching such an attack by way of Yazoo Pass.
Wilson, described by a contemporary as "a slight person of a light
complexion and with rather a pinched face," was enthusiastic from the
start. An Illinois regular, only two years out of West Point and approach-
ing his twenty-sixth birthday, he recently had been transferred from the
East, where he had served as an aide to McClellan at Antietam, and he
had approached his western assignment with doubts, particularly in re-
gard to Grant, whose "simple and unmilitary bearing," as the young man
phrased it, made a drab impression by contrast with the recent splendor
of Little Mac, whose official family had included an Astor and two
genuine French princes of the blood. But in this case familiarity bred
affection; Wilson soon was remarking that his new commander was "a
most agreeable companion both on the march and in camp." What drew
him more than anything, however, was the trust Grant showed in send-
ing him to take charge of the opening phase of this fifth and latest proj-
ect for the reduction of the Gibraltar of the West. After a bit of pre-
liminary surveying and shovel work, he wasted no time. On the evening
of February 3 — while Ellet prepared to take the Queen past the Vicks-
burg bluff at daybreak and Grant himself was about to head upriver for
a first-hand look at Lake Providence — Wilson mined and blew the
levee sealing the mouth of Yazoo Pass. The result was altogether spec-
tacular, he reported, "water pouring through like nothing else I ever saw
except Niagara." After waiting four days for the surface level to equal-
ize, east and west of the cut, he boarded a gunboat, steamed "with great
ease" into Moon Lake, a mile beyond, and "ran down it about Hvg miles
to where the Pass leaves it." Hard work was going to be involved, he
wrote Grant's adjutant, but he was confident of a large return on such
an investment. Grant was infected at once with the colonel's enthusiasm.
Wilson already had with him a 4500-man division from Helena; now a
second division was ordered to join him from there. Presently, when he
reported that he had got through to the Coldwater, McPherson was
told to be prepared to follow with his whole corps. "The Yazoo Pass
Unhappy New Year [ 203 ]
expedition is going to prove a perfect success," Grant informed Elihu B.
Washburne, his home-state Representative and congressional guardian
angel.
Hard work had been foreseen, and that was what it took. Emerg-
ing from Moon Lake, Wilson found the remaining twelve-mile segment
of the pass sufficiently deep but so narrow in some places that the gun-
boat could not squeeze between giant oaks and cypresses growing on
opposite banks. These had to be felled with axes, a patience-testing busi-
ness but by no means the most discouraging he encountered. Warned of
his coming, the Confederates had brought in working parties of slaves
from surrounding plantations and had chopped down other trees, some
of them more than four feet through the bole, so that they lay athwart
the bayou, ponderous and apparently immovable. Undaunted, Wilson
borrowed navy hawsers long enough to afford simultaneous hand-
holds for whole regiments of soldiers, whom he put to work snaking the
impediments out of the way. They did it with such ease, he later re-
marked, that he never afterwards wondered how the Egyptians had
lifted the great stones in place when they built the Pyramids; enough
men on a rope could move anything, he decided. Still, he had no such
span of time at his disposal as the Pharaohs had had, and this was at best
a time-consuming process. February was almost gone before he reached
the eastern end of the pass. South of there, however, he expected to
find clear sailing. The Coldwater being "a considerable stream,* he re-
ported, vessels of almost any length and draft could be sent from the
Mississippi into the Tallahatchie in just four days. And so it proved when
a ten-boat flotilla, including two ironclads, two steam rams, and six tin-
clads — the 22 light transports were to come along behind — tried it
during the first week in March. In fact, it was not until the warships
were more than a hundred miles down the winding Tallahatchie, near
its junction with the Yalobusha, that Wilson realized he was in for a
great deal more trouble, and of a kind he had not encountered up to now.
The trouble now was the rebels themselves, not just the various
obstructions they had left in his path before fading back into the
swamps and woods. Five miles above Greenwood, a hamlet at the con-
fluence of the rivers, they had improvised on a boggy island inclosed by
a loop of the Tallahatchie a fort whose parapets, built of cotton bales
and reinforced with sandbags, were designed not only to deflect heavy
projectiles but also to keep out the river itself, which had gone well
past the flood stage when the Yankees blew the levee far upstream.
Fort Pemberton, the place was called, and it had as its commander a
man out of the dim Confederate past: Brigadier General Lloyd Tilgh-
man, who had fought against Grant and the ironclads under similar cir-
cumstances at Fort Henry, thirteen months ago. Exchanged and rein-
stated, he was determined to wipe out that defeat, though the odds were
as long and the tactical situation not much different. His immediate su-
[204] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
perior, Major General W. W. Loring, was also a carry-over from the
past, and as commander of the delta subdepartment he intended to give
the Federals even more trouble than he had given Lee and Jackson in
Virginia the year before, which was considerable. A third relic on the
scene was the former U.S. ocean steamer Star of the West, whose name
had been in the scareheads three full months before the war, when the
Charleston batteries fired on her for attempting the relief of Sumter.
Continuing on to Texas, she had been captured in mid-April by Van
Dorn at Indianola and was in the rebel service as a receiving-ship at
New Orleans a year later, when Farragut provoked her flight up the Mis-
sissippi and into the Yazoo to avoid recapture. Here above Greenwood
she ended her days afloat, but not her career, for she was sunk in the
Tallahatchie alongside Fort Pemberton, blocking the channel and thus
becoming an integral part of the outer defenses of Vicksburg. Three
regiments, one from Texas and two from Mississippi, were all the high
command could spare for manning the breastworks and the guns, which
included one 6.4-inch rifle and half a dozen smaller pieces. This was
scarcely a formidable armament with which to oppose 11 -inch Dahl-
grens housed in armored casemates, but on March 1 1 — while north-
ward a long column of approaching warships and transports sent up a
winding trail of smoke, stretching out of sight beyond the heavy screen
of woods — the graybacks were a determined crew as they sighted their
guns up the straight stretch of river giving down upon the fort.
Lieutenant Commander Watson Smith, who had charge of the
ten-boat Union flotilla, was by now in a state of acute distress; he had
never experienced anything like this in all his years afloat. Coming
through Yazoo Pass into the Coldwater and down the Tallahatchie, all
of which were so narrow in places that the gunboats had to be warped
around the sharper bends with ropes, one tinclad had shattered her
wheel and was out of action, while another had lost both smokestacks.
All the rest had taken similar punishment in passing over rafts of drift-
wood or under projecting limbs that came sweeping and crashing along
their upper works. The most serious of these mishaps was suffered when
the Chillicothe, one of the two ironclads, struck a snag and started a
plank in her bottom, which had to be held in place by beams shored in
from the deck above. Smith's distress was greatly increased this morning,
however, when this same unlucky vessel, at the head of the column,
rounded the next-to-final bend leading down to the Yazoo and was
struck hard twice on the turrets by high-velocity shells from dead ahead.
She pulled back to survey the damage and fortify with cotton bales,
then came on again that afternoon, accompanied by the other ironclad,
the De Kalb. She got off four rounds at 800 yards and was about to fire
a fifth — the loaders had already set the 1 i-inch shell in the gun's muz-
zle and were stripping the patch from the fuze — when a rebel shell
came screaming through the port; both projectiles exploded on contact,
Unhappy New Year [ 205 ]
killing 2 and wounding 1 1 of the gun crew. The two ironclads with-
drew under urgent orders from Smith, whose distress had increased to
the point where, according to Porter's subsequent report, he was show-
ing "symptoms of aberration of mind."
Twice more, on the 13 th and the 16th — without, however, at-
tempting to close the range — the ironclads tried for a reduction of the
fort at the end of that tree-lined stretch of river, as straight and un-
cluttered as a bowling alley: with similar results. Unable to maneuver in
the narrow stream, the two boats took a terrible pounding, but could do
little more than bounce their big projectiles off the resilient enemy para-
pet. The infantry, waiting rearward in the transports, gave no help at
all; for the flooded banks made debarkation impossible, and any attempt
at a small-boat attack — even if such boats had been available, which
they were not — would have been suicidal. By the time the third day's
bombardment was over, both ironclads were badly crippled; the De Kalb
had lost ten of her gun-deck beams and her steerage was shot to pieces,
while the luckless Chillicothe had more of her crew felled by armor
bolts driven inward, under the impact of shells from the hard-hitting
enemy rifle, to fly like bullets through the casemate. On March 17, in an
apparent moment of lucidity, Smith ordered the flotilla to withdraw.
Everyone agreed that this was the wisest course: everyone but Wilson,
who complained hotly to Grant that the issue had not been pressed.
"To let one 6]/ 2 -inch rifle stop our navy. Bah!" he protested, and put the
blame on "Acting Rear Admiral, Commodore, Captain, Lieutenant-
Commander Smith" and the other naval officers. "I've talked with them
all and tried to give them backbone," he said, "but they are not con-
fident."
Returning up the Coldwater two days later — while Loring and
Tilghman were celebrating the repulse in victory dispatches sent down-
river to Vicksburg — the disconsolate Federals met the second Helena
division on its way to reinforce them under Brigadier General Isaac
Quinby, who outranked all the brass at hand and was unwilling to re-
treat without so much as a look at what stood in the way of an ad-
vance. So the expedition turned around and came back down again.
Stopping short of the bend leading into the bowling alley, the men
aboard the transports and gunboats slapped at mosquitoes and practiced
their marksmanship on alligators, while Quinby conducted a boggy
twelve-day reconnaissance which finally persuaded him that Smith had
been right in the first place. Besides, even Wilson was convinced by
now that the game was not worth the candle, for the rebels had brought
up another steamboat which they were "either ready to sink or use as a
boarding-craft and ram," and it seemed to the young colonel that they
were "making great calculations 'to bag us' entire." He agreed that the
time had come for a final departure. This began on April 5 and brought
the Yazoo Pass experiment to a close. Being, as he said, "solicitous for
[ 206 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
my reputation at headquarters," Wilson ended a letter to Grant's ad-
jutant with a request for the latest staff gossip, and thought to add:
"Remember me kindly to the general.' ,
His fears, though natural enough in an ambitious young career
officer who had failed in his first independent assignment, were ground-
less. For unlike Porter, who no sooner learned the details of the Talla-
hatchie nightmare than he relieved Watson Smith of duty with the fleet
and sent him North — where presently, by way of proving that his
affliction had been physical as well as mental, he died in a delirium of
fever and chagrin — Grant did not hold the collapse of this fifth experi-
ment against his subordinate, but rather, when Wilson returned at last
to Young's Point after an absence of more than two months, welcomed
him back without reproach into the fold. By then the army commander
had a better appreciation of the problems that stood in the way of an
amphibious penetration of the delta, having been involved simultane-
ously in a not unsimilar nightmare of his own. In point of fact, however,
no matter how little he chose to bring it to bear, Porter had even
greater occasion for such charity, since he had been more intimately
involved, not only as the author but also as the on-the-scene director of
this latest fiasco, the sole result of which had been the addition of a sixth
to the sequence of failures designed for the reduction of Vicksburg.
Left with time more or less on his hands after the downriver loss
of two of his best warships, and being anxious moreover to offset the
damage to his reputation with an exploit involving something less flimsy
than a dummy ironclad, the admiral pored over his charts and made
various exploratory trips up and down the network of creeks and
bayous flowing into the Yazoo River below Haines Bluff, whose guns he
had learned to respect back in December. Five miles upstream from its
junction with the Mississippi, the Yazoo received the sluggish waters of
Steele Bayou, and forty miles up Steele Bayou, Black Bayou con-
nected eastward with Deer Creek, which in turn, at about the same up-
stream distance and by means of another bayou called Rolling Fork,
connected eastward with the Sunflower River. That was where the pay-
off came within easy reach; for the Sunflower flowed into the Yazoo,
fifty miles below, offering the chance for an uncontested high-ground
landing well above the Haines Bluff fortifications, which then could be
assaulted from the rear or bypassed on the way to the back door of
Vicksburg. Though the route was crooked and the distance great —
especially by contrast; no less than two hundred roundabout miles
would have to be traversed by the column of gunboats and transports in
order to put the troops ashore no more than twenty air-line miles above
their starting point — Porter was so firmly convinced he had found the
solution to the knotty Vicksburg problem that he called at Young's
Point and persuaded Grant to come aboard the Black Hawk for a demon-
stration. Steaming up the Yazoo, the admiral watched the tree-fringed
Unhappy New Year [ 207 ]
north bank for a while, then suddenly to his companion's amazement
signaled the helm for a hard turn to port, into brush that was apparently
impenetrable. So far, high water had been the curse of the campaign,
but now it proved an asset. As the boat swung through the leafy barrier,
which parted to admit it, the leadsman sang out a sounding of fifteen
feet — better than twice the depth the ironclads required. Formerly
startled, Grant was now convinced, especially when Porter informed
him that they were steaming above an old road once used for hauling
cotton to the river. Practically all the lower delta was submerged, in
part because of the seasonal rise of the rivers, but mostly because of the
cut Wilson had made in the levee, four hundred miles upstream at Yazoo
Pass; a tremendous volume of water had come down the various tribu-
taries and had spread itself over the land. It was Porter's contention,
based on limited reconnaissance, that as a result all those creeks and
bayous would be navigable from end to end by vessels of almost any
size, including the gunboats and transports selected to thread the
labyrinth giving down upon the back-door approach to Vicksburg.
Infected once more with contagious enthusiasm, Grant returned without
delay to Young's Point, where he issued orders that same night for the
army's share in what was known thereafter as the Steele Bayou ex-
pedition.
Sherman drew the assignment, along with one of his two divisions
of men who just that week had been flooded out of their pick-and-
shovel work on the doomed canal, and went up the Mississippi to a
point where a long bend swung eastward to within a mile of Steele
Bayou. On the afternoon of March 16, after slogging across this boggy
neck of land, he made contact with the naval units, which had come up
by way of the Yazoo that morning. As soon as he got his troops aboard
the waiting transports the column resumed its progress northward, five
ironclads in the lead, followed by four all-purpose tugs and a pair of
mortar boats which Porter, not knowing what he might encounter in the
labyrinth ahead, had had "built for the occasion." With his mind's eye
fixed on permanent rank and the ribboned star Fox had promised to try
for, the admiral was taking no chances he could avoid. All went well —
as he had expected because of his preliminary reconnaissance — until the
gunboats approached Black Bayou, where the unreconnoitered portion
of the route began. This narrow, four-mile, time-forgotten stretch
of stagnant water was not only extremely crooked, it was also filled with
trees. Porter used his heavy boats to butt them down, bulldozer style,
and hoisted them aside with snatch blocks. This was heavy labor, neces-
sarily slow, and as it progressed the column changed considerably in
appearance. Overhead branches swept the upper decks of the warships,
leaving a mess of wreckage in the place of boats and woodwork. Oc-
casionally, too, as Porter said, "a rude tree would throw Briarean arms"
around the stacks of the slowly passing vessels, "and knock their bonnets
[2o8] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
sideways." After about a mile of this, Sherman's men were put to work
with ropes and axes, clearing a broader passage for the transports,
while the sturdier ironclads forged ahead, thumping and bumping their
way into Deer Creek, where they resumed a northward course next
morning.
But this was worse in several ways, one of them being that the
creek was even narrower than the bayou. If the trees were fewer, they
were also closer together, and vermin of all kinds had taken refuge in
them from the flood; so that when one of the gunboats struck a tree
the quivering limbs let fall a plague of rats, mice, cockroaches, snakes,
and lizards. Men were stationed about the decks with brooms to rid
the vessels of such unwelcome boarders, but sometimes the sweepers
had larger game to contend with, including coons and wildcats. These
last, however, "were prejudiced against us, and refused to be comforted
on board," the admiral subsequently wrote, "though I am sorry to say
we found more Union feeling among the bugs." To add to the night-
mare, Deer Creek was the crookedest stream he had ever encountered:
"One minute an ironclad would apparently be leading ahead, and the
next minute would as apparently be steering the other way." Along one
brief stretch, less than half a mile in length, the five warships were steam-
ing in five quite different directions. Moreover, this was a region of
plantations, which meant that there were man-made obstacles such as
bridges, and though these gave the heavy boats no real trouble — they
could plow through them as if they were built of matchsticks — other
impediments were more disturbing. For example, hearing of the ap-
proach of the Yankees, the planters had had their baled cotton stacked
along both creekbanks and set afire in order to keep it out of the hands
of the invaders: with the result that, from time to time, the gunboats
had to run a fiery gauntlet. The thick white smoke sent the crews into
spasms of coughing, while the heat singed their hair, scorched their
faces, and blistered the paint from the vessels' iron flanks.
So far, despite the crowds of field hands who lined the banks to
marvel at the appearance of ironclads where not even flat-bottomed
packets had ventured before, Porter had not seen a single white man.
He found this odd, and indeed somewhat foreboding. Presently, how-
ever, spotting one sitting in front of a cabin and smoking a pipe as if
nothing unusual were going on around him, the admiral had the flagship
stopped just short of another bridge and summoned the man to come
down to the landing; which he did — a burly, rough-faced individual,
in shirt sleeves and bareheaded; "half bulldog, half bloodhound," Porter
called him. When the admiral began to question him he identified him-
self as the plantation overseer. "I suppose you are Union, of course?"
Porter said. "You all are so when it suits you." "No, by God, I'm not, and
never will be," the man replied. "As to the others, I know nothing about
Unhappy New Year [ 209 ]
them. Find out for yourself. I'm for Jeff Davis first, last, and all the time.
Do you want any more of me?" he added; "for I am not a loquacious
man at any time." "No, I want nothing more with you," Porter said.
"But I am going to steam into that bridge of yours across the stream
and knock it down. Is it strongly built?" "You may knock it down and
be damned," the overseer told him. "It don't belong to me." Catching
something in his accent, Porter remarked: "You're a Yankee by birth,
are you not?" "Yes, damn it, I am," the man admitted. "But that's no
reason I should like the institution. I cut it long ago." And with this he
turned on his heel and walked away. Porter had the skipper ring "Go
ahead fast," and the ironclad smashed through the bridge about as
easily as if it had not been there. When he looked back, however, to see
what impression this had made on the overseer, he saw him seated once
more in front of the cabin, smoking his pipe, not having bothered even
to turn his head and watch. Deciding that the fellow "was but one re-
move from a brute," Porter was disturbed by the thought that "there
were hundreds more like him" lurking somewhere in the brush. At any
rate, he fervently hoped that Sherman's men — particularly one regi-
ment, which had the reputation of being able to "catch, scrape, and skin
a hog without a soldier leaving the ranks" — would "pay the apostate
Yankee a visit, if only to teach him good manners."
Under the circumstances, even aside from the necessary halts, half
a mile an hour was the best speed the ironclads could make on this St
Patrick's Day. Nightfall overtook them a scant eight miles from the
morning's starting point. Twelve miles they made next day, but the in-
creased speed increased the damage to the boats, including the loss of
all the skylights to falling debris, and when they stopped engines for the
night, Porter heard from up ahead the least welcome of all sounds: the
steady chuck of axes, informing him that the rebels were warned of
his coming. He wished fervently for Sherman, whose men were still at
work in Black Bayou, widening a pathway for their transports, and con-
soled himself with the thought that the red-haired general would be
along eventually; "there was only one road, so he couldn't have taken
the wrong one." For the present, however, he did what he could with
what he had, sending the mortar boats forward in the darkness; and
when their firing stopped, so had the axes. Next morning, March 19,
he pushed on. Despite the delay involved in hoisting the felled trees
aside, he made such good progress that by nightfall he was within half
a mile of the entrance to Rolling Fork. At daybreak he steamed north
again, but the flagship had gone barely two hundred yards when, just
ahead and extending all the way across the creek, the admiral saw "a
large green patch . . . like the green scum on ponds." He shouted
down from the bridge to one of the admiring field hands on the bank:
"What is that?" "It's nufrin but willers, sah," the Negro replied, explain-
[2io] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
ing that in the off season the plantation workers often went out in
skiffs and canoes to cut the willow wands for weaving baskets. "You
kin go through dat lak a eel. ,,
That this last was an overstatement — based on a failure to real-
ize that, unlike skiffs and canoes, the gunboats moved through rather
than over the water, and what was more had paddle wheels and over-
lapping plates of armor — Porter discovered within a couple of minutes
of giving the order to go ahead. Starting with a full head of steam, the
ironclad made about thirty yards before coming to a dead stop, gripped
tightly by the willow withes, not unlike Gulliver when he woke to find
himself in Lilliputian bonds. The admiral called for hard astern; but that
was no good either; the vessel would not budge. Here was a ticklish sit-
uation. The high creekbanks rendered the warships practically helpless,
for their guns would not clear them even at extreme elevation. Not
knowing what he would do if the Confederates made a determined
boarding attack, Porter fortified a nearby Indian mound with four
smoothbore howitzers and put the flagship's crew over the side with
knives and hooks and orders to cut her loose, twig by twig. It was slow
work; "I wished ironclads were in Jericho," he later declared. Just then
his wish seemed about to be fulfilled. The shrill shrieks of two rifle shots,
which he recognized as high-velocity Whitworths, were followed at
once by a pair of bursts, abrupt as blue-sky thunder and directly over
the mound. Suddenly, in the wake of these two ranging shots — within
six hundred yards of Rolling Fork and less than ten miles from clear
sailing down the broad and unobstructed Sunflower River — two six-
gun rebel batteries were firing on the outranged smoothbores from op-
posite directions, and the naval commander was shocked to see his
cannoneers come tumbling down the rearward slope of the mound, seek-
ing cover from the rain of shells. Continuing to hack at the clinging wil-
lows, he got his mortars into counterbattery action and, with the help
of half a dollar, persuaded a "truthful contraband" (so Porter termed
him later, but just then he called him Sambo; which drew the reply,
"My name aint Sambo, sah. My name's Tub") to attempt to get a mes-
sage through to Sherman and his soldiers, wherever downstream they
might be by now. "Dear Sherman," the note began: "Hurry up, for
Heaven's sake."
Tub reached Sherman on Black Bayou late that night, having
taken various short cuts, and Sherman started northward before day-
light, accompanied by all the troops on hand. Retracing the messenger's
route through darkness, they carried lighted candles in their hands as
they slogged waist-deep through swamps and canebrakes. "The smaller
drummer boys had to carry their drums on their heads," the general
afterwards recalled, "and most of the men slung their cartridge boxes
around their necks." All the following day they pushed on, frequently
Unhappy New Year [211]
losing their way, and into darkness again. At dawn Sunday, March 22,
they heard from surprisingly close at hand the boom of Porter's mor-
tars, punctuated by the sharper crack of the Whitworths. Presently
they encountered rebels who had got below the ironclads and were
felling trees to block their escape downstream. Sherman chased them
from their work and pushed on. Soon he came within sight of the be-
leaguered flotilla, but found it woefully changed in appearance. After
finally managing to extricate the willow-bound flagship with winches,
Porter had unshipped the rudders of all five gunboats and was steam-
ing backward down the narrow creek, fighting as he went. He had not
only heard the sound of axes in his rear; what was worse, he had sud-
denly realized that the Confederates might dam the creek upstream with
cotton bales and leave him stranded in the mud. The arriving bluecoats
ran the snipers off — they were not actually so numerous as they seemed;
just industrious — and came up to find the admiral on the deck of the
flagship, directing the retreat from behind a shield improvised from a
section of smokestack. "I doubt if he was ever more glad to meet a
friend than he was to see me," Sherman later declared. For the present,
though, he asked if Porter wanted him to go ahead and "clean those fel-
lows out" so the navy could resume its former course. "Thank you, no,"
the admiral said. He had had enough, and so had Sherman, who com-
plained hotly that this was "the most infernal expedition I was ever
on." As Porter subsequently put it, "The game was up, and we bumped
on homeward."
All the way downstream, from Deer Creek through Black
Bayou, the sailors took a ribbing from the soldiers who stood along the
banks to watch them go by, in reverse and rudderless. "Halloo, Jack,"
they would call. "How do you like playing mud turtle?" "Where's all
your masts and sails, Jack?" "By the Widow Perkins, if Johnny Reb
hasn't taken their rudders away and set them adrift!" But an old fore-
castleman gave as good as he got. "Dry up!" he shouted back at them.
"We wa'n't half as much used up as you was at Chickasaw Bayou." So it
went until the gunboats regained Steele Bayou and finally the mouth of
the Yazoo, where they dropped anchor — those that still had them —
and were laid up for repairs. Within another week they were supplied
with new chimneys and skylights and woodwork; they glistened with
fresh coats of paint, and according to Porter, "no one would have sup-
posed we had ever been away from a dock-yard." By then, too, the
officers had begun to discuss their share in this sixth of Grant's Vicks-
burg failures with something resembling nostalgia. There was an edge
of pride in their voices as they spoke of the exploit, and some even
talked of being willing to go again. But they did so, the admiral added,
much "as people who have gone in search of the North Pole, and have
fared dreadfully, wish to try it once more."
[212] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
Despite the high hopes generated during the preliminary re-
connaissance up Steele Bayou, Grant was no more discouraged by this
penultimate failure, reported in no uncertain terms by a disgusted Sher-
man, than he had been by the preceding five. Now as before, he already
had a successive experiment in progress, which served to distract the
public's attention and occupy his mind and men. Besides, for once, he
had good news to send along to Washington with the bad — the an-
nouncement of the first real success achieved by Federal arms on the
river since his arrival in late January — although his pleasure in report-
ing it was considerably diminished by the fact that it had been accom-
plished not in his own department but in Banks's, not by the army but
by the navy, and not by Porter but by Farragut.
Banks himself had been having troubles that rivaled Grant's, if
not in number — being limited by a lack of corresponding ingenuity and
equipment in his attempts to come to grips with the problem — then
at any rate in thorniness. Port Hudson was quite as invulnerable to a
frontal assault as Vicksburg, so that here too the solution was restricted
to two methods: either to attack the hundred-foot bluff from the rear
or else to go around it. He worked hard for a time at the latter, seeking
a route up the Atchafalaya, into the Red, and thence into the Mississippi,
fifty miles above the Confederate bastion. At first this appeared to be
ready-made for his use, but it turned out to be impractical on three
counts, i) He had only one gunboat designed for work on the rivers;
2) a large portion of the Atchafalaya basin was under water as a result
of breaks in the neglected levees; and 3) he became convinced that to
leave the rebel garrison alive and kicking in his rear would be to risk, if
not invite, the recapture of New Orleans. This last was so unthinkable
that it no sooner occurred to him than he abandoned all notion of such
an attempt. As for attacking Port Hudson from the rear, he perceived
that this would be about as risky as attacking it from the front. Knowing
nothing of Grant's success or failure upriver, except the significant fact
that something must have happened to delay him, Banks did not know
but what the Confederates would be free to concentrate against him
from all directions, including the north, as soon as he got his troops
ashore; which would mean, at best, that he would lose his siege train in
a retreat from superior numbers, and at worst that he would lose his
army. Thus both methods of approaching a solution to the problem
seemed to him likely to end in disaster; he did not know what to do, at
least until he could get in touch with Grant upstream. Consequently, he
did nothing.
This reverse approach, with its stress on what the enemy might
do to him, rather than on what he intended to do to the enemy, had not
been Grant's way of coming to grips with the similar problem, some
three hundred miles upstream; nor was it Farragut's. The old sea dog —
Unhappy New Year [213]
approaching sixty-two, he was Tennessee-born and twice married, both
times to Virginians, which had caused some doubt as to his loyalty in the
early months of the war — had surmounted what had seemed to be
longer odds below New Orleans the year before, and he was altogether
willing to try it again, "army or no army." In early March, when he
received word that the rebels, by way of reinforcing their claim to con-
trol of the whole Red River system, along with so much of the Mis-
sissippi as ran between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, had captured the
steam ram Queen of the West, he took the action as a challenge to per-
sonal combat; especially when they emphasized it by sinking and seizing
the ironclad Indianola, which for all he knew was about to join the
Queen in defying the flag she once had flown. He promptly assembled
his seven wooden ships off Profit's Island, seven miles below Port Hud-
son, intending to take them past the fortified heights for a showdown
with the renegade boats upriver. He had with him the three heavy
sloops-of-war Hartford, Richmond, and Monongahela, the old side-
wheeler Mississippi, and three gunboats. All were ocean-going vessels,
unarmored but mounting a total of 95 guns, mostly heavy — the flag-
ship Hartford alone carried two dozen 9-inch Dahlgrens — with which
to oppose the 21 pieces manned by the Confederates ashore. This ad-
vantage in the weight of metal would be offset considerably, however,
by the plunging fire of the guns on the hundred-foot bluff and by the
five-knot current, which would hold the ships to a crawl as they
rounded the sharp bend at its foot. In an attempt to increase the speed
and power of his slower and larger ships, Farragut gave instructions
for the three gunboats to be lashed to the unengaged port sides of the
three sloops; the Mississippi, whose paddle boxes would not allow this,
would have to take her chances unassisted. It was the admiral's hope that
the flotilla would steam past undetected in the moonless darkness, but a
greenhorn chaplain, watching the gun crews place within easy reach
"little square, shallow, wooden boxes filled with sawdust, like the spit-
toons one used to see in country barrooms," was shocked to learn that
the contents were to be scattered about the deck as "an absorbent" to
keep the men from slipping in their own blood, when and if the guns
began to roar and hits were scored. At 9.30 p.m. March 14, the pre-
arranged signal — two red lights described by the same impressionable
chaplain as "two distinct red spots like burning coals" — appeared just
under the stern of the flagship in the lead, and the run began.
At first it went as had been planned and hoped for. Undetected,
unsuspected, the Hartford led the way up the long straight stretch of
river leading due north into the bend that would swing the column
west-southwest; she even cleared the first battery south of town, her
engines throbbing in the darkness, her pilot hugging the east bank to
avoid the mudflat shallows of the point across the way. Then suddenly
the night was bright with rockets and the glare of pitch-pine bonfires
[2i 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
ignited by west-bank sentinels, who thus not only alerted the gun crews
on the bluff, but also did them the service of illuminating their targets
on the river down below. The fight began as it were in mid-crescendo.
Still holding so close to the east bank that the men on her deck could
hear the shouts of the enemy cannoneers, the flagship opened a rolling
fire which was taken up in turn by the ships astern. The night was misty
and windless; smoke settled thick on the water, leaving the helmsmen
groping blindly and the gunners with nothing to aim at but the
overhead muzzle flashes. In this respect the Hartford had the advantage,
steaming ahead of her own smoke, but even she had her troubles, being
caught by the swift current and swept against the enemy bank as she
turned into the bend. Helped by her gunboat tug, she backed off and
swung clear, chugging upstream at barely three knots, much damaged
about her top and spars, but with only three men hit. Attempting to fol-
low, the Rich?nond was struck by a plunging shot that crashed into her
engine room and caromed about, cracking both port and starboard
safety valves and dropping her boiler pressure below ten pounds. Too
weak to make headway, even with the assistance of the gunboat lashed
to her flank, she went with the current and out of the fight, leaking steam
from all her ports, followed presently by the Monongahek, which suf-
fered the same fate when her escort's rudder was wedged by an unlucky
shot, one of her own engines was disabled by an overheated crankpin,
and her captain was incapacitated by a shell that cut the bridge from
under him and pitched him headlong onto the deck below. Between
them, the two sloops and their escorts lost 45 killed and wounded before
they veered out of range downriver. But the veteran frigate Mississippi
— Commodore Matthew Perry's flagship, ten years ago, when he
steamed into Tokyo Bay and opened Japan to the Western world —
took the worst beating of the lot, not only from the Confederates on the
bluff, but also from the gunners on the Richmond, who, not having got-
ten the word that the sloop had turned in the opposite direction, fired
at the flashes of the side-wheeler's guns as they swept past her. Blind in
the smoke, pounded alike by friend and foe, the pilot went into the
bend and put the ship hard to larboard all too soon: with the result that
she ran full tilt onto the mudflats across the way from the fuming bluff.
Silhouetted against the glare of bonfires and taking hit after hit from
the rebel guns, she tried for half an hour to pull loose by reversing her
engines, but to no avail. Her captain ordered her set afire as soon as the
crew — 64 of whom were casualties by now — could be taken off in
boats, and it was only through the efforts of her executive, Lieutenant
George Dewey, that many of her wounded were not roasted, including
a badly frightened ship's boy he found hiding under a pile of corpses.
Burning furiously, the Mississippi lightened before dawn and drifted off
the flats of her own accord, threatening to set the other repulsed ves-
sels afire as she passed unmanned among them and piled up at last on the
Unhappy New Year [ 215 ]
head of Profit's Island, where she exploded with what an observer
called "the grandest display of fireworks I ever witnessed, and the cost-
liest."
It had been quite a costly operation all around. Thirty-five of the
flotilla's 1 1 2 casualties were dead men — only two less than had been
killed in the venture below New Orleans by a force almost three times
as large — and of the seven ships that had attempted to run Port Hud-
son, one was destroyed and four had been driven back disabled. As a box
score, this gave the Confederates ample claim to the honors of the en-
gagement; but the fact remained that, whatever the cost, Farragut had
done what he set out to do. He had put warships north of the bluff on
the Mississippi, and he was ready to use them to dispute the rebel claim
to control of the 250 miles of river below Vicksburg. Dropping down
at dawn to just beyond range of Port Hudson's upper batteries, he
fired the prearranged three-gun signal to let the rest of the flotilla know
that he was still afloat, then set out upriver and anchored next morning
off the mouth of the Red, up which he learned that the renegade Queen
and the fast-steaming Webb had taken refuge after their flight from
Porter's dummy ironclad. Both were too heavily damaged, as a result
of their ram attacks on the lndianola, to be able to fight again without
extensive repairs. So he heard; but he was taking no chances. Lowering
the Hartford's yards to the deck, he lashed them there and carried a heavy
anchor chain from yard tip to yard tip, all the way round, to fend off
attackers. Still unsatisfied, he improvised water-line armor by lashing
cypress logs to the sides of the vessel and slung hawsers from the rig-
ging, thirty feet above the deck, with heavy netting carried all the way
down to the rail to frustrate would-be boarders. Then, accompanied by
her six-gun escort Albatross, the Hartford — whose own builders would
scarcely have recognized her, dressed out in this manner — set out
northward, heading for Vicksburg in order to open communications
with the upper fleet.
Passing Grand Gulf on March 19 the two ships came under fire
that cost them 2 more killed and 6 more wounded, almost three times the
number they had lost Rve nights ago; otherwise they encountered no
opposition between Port Hudson and the point where they dropped
anchor next morning, just beyond range of the lower Vicksburg batter-
ies. Porter was up Steele Bayou, but conferring that afternoon with
Grant and A. W. Ellet, the ram fleet commander, Farragut asked that
he be reinforced by units from the upper flotilla. Ellet volunteered to
send two of his boats, the Switzerland and the Lancaster, respectively
under C. R. Ellet, the former captain of the Queen, and his uncle
Lieutenant Colonel J. A. Ellet. They made their run at first light, March
25. The Lancaster was struck repeatedly in her machinery and hull, but
she made it downstream, where a week's patchwork labor would put
her back in shape to fight again. Not so the Switzerland; she received
[zi6] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
a shell in her boilers and others which did such damage to her hull that
she went to pieces and sank, affording her nineteen-year-old skipper
another ride on a bale of cotton. Unperturbed, Grant reported her loss
as a blessing in disguise, since it served to reveal her basic unfitness for
combat: "It is almost certain that had she made one ram into another
vessel she would have closed up like a spy-glass, encompassing all on
board."
In point of fact, whatever the cost and entirely aside from his
accustomed optimism, he and all who favored the Union cause had
much to be joyful about. As a result of this latest naval development,
which would establish a blockade of the mouth of the Red and deny
the rebels the use of their last extensive stretch of the Mississippi, Farra-
gut had cut the Confederacy in two. The halves were still unconquered,
and seemed likely to remain so for no one knew how long, but they
were permanently severed one from the other. When the Hartford and
the Albatross passed Port Hudson and were joined ten days later below
Vicksburg by the steam ram Lancaster, the cattle and cereals of the
Transmississippi, together with the goods of war that could be smug-
gled in through Mexico from Europe, became as inaccessible to the east-
ern South as if they were awaiting shipment on the moon.
This was not to say, conversely, that the Mississippi was open
throughout its length to Federal commerce or even to Federal gunboats;
that would not be the case, of course, until Vicksburg and Port Hudson
had been taken or abolished. Continuing his efforts to accomplish this
end, or anyhow his half of it, Grant was already engaged in the seventh
of his experiments — which presently turned out to be the seventh of his
failures. Work on the canal across the base of Vicksburg Point hav-
ing been abandoned, he sent an engineering party out to find a better
site for such a project close at hand. Receiving a report that a little dig-
ging south of Duckport, just above Young's Point, would give the light-
draft vessels access to Roundaway Bayou, which entered the main river
at New Carthage, well below the Vicksburg and Warrenton batteries,
Grant gave McClernand's men a turn on the picks and shovels. For
once, however, he had no great hope that much would come of the
enterprise, even if it went as planned — only the lightest-draft supply
boats would be able to get through; besides, there would still be the
Grand Gulf batteries to contend with — and for once he was right.
Even this limited success depended on a rise of the river; whereupon the
river, perverse as always, began to fall, leaving Grant with a seventh
failure on his hands.
"This campaign is being badly managed," Cadwallader Wash-
burn, a brigadier in McPherson's corps, informed his congressman
brother Elihu in Washington. "I am sure of it. I fear a calamity before
Vicksburg. All Grant's schemes have failed. He knows that he has got
Unhappy New Year [ 2 1 7 1
to do something or off goes his head. My impression is that he intends
to attack in front." (Washburn's fears were better founded than he
knew. Grant had just written a long letter to Banks, reviewing his lack
of progress up to now, and in it he had stated flatly: "There is nothing
left for me but to collect my strength and attack Haines Bluff. This will
necessarily be attended with much loss, but I think it can be done." On
April Fools' Day, however, accompanying Porter up the Yazoo for
a reconnaissance of the position, he decided that such an attack "would
be attended with immense sacrifice of life, if not defeat," and abandoned
the notion, adding: "This, then, closes out the last hope of turning the
enemy by the right.") Nor were others, farther removed from the scene
of action, more reticent in giving their opinion of the disaster in store
for the Army of the Tennessee. For example Marat Halstead, editor of
the Cincinnati Commercial, addressed his friend the Secretary of the
Treasury on the matter: "You do once in a while, don't you, say a word
to the President, or Stanton, or Halleck, about the conduct of the war?
Well, now, for God's sake say that Genl Grant, entrusted with our
greatest army, is a jackass in the original package. He is a poor drunken
imbecile. He is a poor stick sober, and he is most of the time more than
half drunk, and much of the time idiotically drunk. . . . Grant will fail
miserably, hopelessly, eternally. You may look for and calculate his
failures, in every position in which he may be placed, as a perfect cer-
tainty. Don't say I am grumbling. Alas! I know too well I am but feebly
outlining the truth." Alarmed, Chase passed the letter on to Lincoln with
the reminder that the Commercial was an influential paper, and the in-
dorsement: "Reports concerning General Grant similar to the state-
ments made by Mr Halstead are too common to be safely or even pru-
dently disregarded." Lincoln read it with a sigh. "I think Grant has
hardly a friend left, except myself," he told his secretary, and when a
delegation came to protest Grant's alleged insobriety he put these civil-
ians off with the remark, "If I knew what brand of whiskey he drinks I
would send a barrel or so to some other generals." About this time a
Nebraska brigadier, in Washington on leave from Vicksburg, called on
the President and the two men got to talking. "What I want, and what
the people want, is generals who will fight battles and win victories,"
Lincoln said. "Grant has done this, and I propose to stand by him."
The evidence was conflicting. Some said the general never
touched a drop; others declared that he was seldom sober; while still
others had him pegged as a spree drinker. "He tries to let liquor alone
but he cannot resist the temptation always," a Wisconsin brigadier wrote
home. "When he came to Memphis he left his wife at LaGrange, and for
several days after getting here was beastly drunk, utterly incapable of
doing anything. Quinby and I took him in charge, watching him day
and night and keeping liquor away from him." According to this wit-
ness, the bender was only brought to an end when "we telegraphed
[ 2i8] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
to his wife and brought her on to take care of him." On the other hand,
Mary Livermore — later famous as a suffragette — led a Sanitary Com-
mission delegation down to Young's Point to investigate the rumors,
and it was her opinion that the general's "clear eye, clean skin, firm
flesh, and steady nerves . . . gave the lie to the universal calumnies then
current concerning his intemperate habits." Still unsatisfied, Stanton
sent the former Brook Farm colonist and Greeley journalist Charles Dana
down the Mississippi, ostensibly as an inspector of the pay service, but
actually as a spy for the War Department. He arrived in early April, be-
came in effect a member of the general's military family, and soon was
filing reports that glowed with praise not only of Grant but also of
Sherman and McPherson, declaring that in their "unpretending simplic-
ity" the three Ohioans were "as alike as three peas." McClernand did not
fare so well in these dispatches; for if Dana acquired a fondness for the
army commander's friends, he also developed a dislike for his enemies.
Later he summed up his findings by describing Grant as "the most mod-
est, the most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew, with a
temper that nothing could disturb and a judgment that was judicial in
its comprehensiveness and wisdom. Not a great man except morally;
not an original or brilliant man, but sincere, thoughtful, deep, and gifted
with courage that never faltered."
Aside from the rhetoric here included, practically all of the gen-
eral's soldiers would have agreed with this assessment of his character
and abilities, even though it was delivered in the wake of seven failures.
"Everything that Grant directs is right," one declared. "His soldiers be-
lieve in him. In our private talks among ourselves I never heard a single
soldier speak in doubt of Grant." According to a New York reporter,
this was not only because of "his energy and disposition to do some-
thing," it was also because he had "the remarkable tact of never spoil-
ing any mysterious and vague notions which [might] be entertained in
the minds of the privates as to the qualities of the commander-in-chief.
He confines himself to saying and doing as little as possible before his
men." Another described him as "a man who could be silent in several
languages," and it was remarked that, on the march, he was more in-
clined to talk of "Illinois horses, hogs, cattle, and farming, than of the
business actually at hand." In general he went about his job, as one
observer had stated at the outset, "with so little friction and noise that it
required a second look to be sure he was doing anything at all." One of
his staff officers got the impression that he was "half a dozen men con-
densed into one," while a journalist, finding him puzzling in the extreme
because he seemed to amount to a good deal more than the sum of all his
parts, came up with the word "unpronounceable" as the one that de-
scribed him best. Grant, he wrote, "has none of the soldier's bearing
about him, but is a man whom one would take for a country merchant
or a village lawyer. He had no distinctive feature; there are a thousand
Unhappy New Year [ 219 ]
like him in personal appearance in the ranks. ... A plain, unpretending
face, with a comely, brownish-red beard and a square forehead, of
short stature and thick-set. He is we would say a good liver, and alto-
gether an unpronounceable man; he is so like hundreds of others as to be
only described in general terms." The soldiers appreciated the lack of
"superfluous flummery" as he moved among them, "turning and chew-
ing restlessly the end of his unlighted cigar." They almost never cheered
him, and they did not often salute him formally; rather, they watched
him, as one said, "with a certain sort of familiar reverence." Present dis-
couragements were mutual; so, someday, would be the glory. Somehow
he was more partner than boss; they were in this thing together. "Good
morning, General," "Pleasant day, General," were the usual salutations,
more fitting than cheers or hat-tossing exhibitions; "A pleasant salute
to, and a good-natured nod from him in return, seems more appropri-
ate." All these things were said of him, and this: "Here was no Mc-
Clellan, begging the boys to allow him to light his cigar on theirs, or
inquiring to what regiment that exceedingly fine-marching company
belonged. . . . There was no nonsense, no sentiment; only a plain business
man of the republic, there for the one single purpose of getting that
command over the river in the shortest time possible."
Yet the fact remained that he and they were into their third
month of camping almost within the shadow of the Vicksburg bluff,
and all they had accomplished so far was the addition of five to their
previous two failures; they were still not "over the river." However, as
the flood waters receded, defining the banks of the bayous and even
the network of greasy-looking roads hub deep in mud, there were rumors
that Grant was evolving an entirely new approach to the old problem.
"As one after another of his schemes fail," Congressman Washburne
heard from his brigadier brother — who had dropped the final euphoni-
ous "e" from his surname, presumably as superfluous baggage for a
soldier — "I hear that he says he has a plan of his own which is yet to
be tried [but] in which he has great confidence." Just what this was
Grant would not say, either to subordinates or superiors, but his staff
observed that he spent long hours in the former ladies' cabin of his
headquarters boat the Magnolia, blueing the air with cigar smoke as he
pored over maps and tentative orders, not so much inaccessible ("I aint
got no business with you, General," they heard one caller tell him; "I
just wanted to have a little talk with you, because folks will ask me if I
did") as removed, withdrawn behind a barrier of intense preoccupation.
After several days of this, McPherson came into the cabin one evening,
glass in hand, and stood facing Grant across the work-littered desk.
"General, this won't do," he said. "You are injuring yourself. Join us in
a few toasts, and throw this burden off your mind." Airs Livermorc, for
one, would have been horrified, but what followed would have quickly
reassured her. Grant looked up, smiled, and replied that whiskey was not
[22o] THE CIVIL WAR^ - 1863
the answer; if McPherson really wanted to help him, he said, he could
give him a dozen cigars and leave him alone. McPherson did so, and
Grant returned to brooding over his papers, still seeking a way to come
to grips with the Confederates in their hilltop citadel.
CHAPTER
x 3 X
Death of a Soldier
* x *
PIERRE GUSTAVE TOUTANT BEAUREGARD WAS
as flamboyant by nature as by name, and over the course of the past
two years this quality, coupled all too often with a readiness to lay
down the sword and take up the pen in defense of his reputation with
the public, had got him into considerable trouble with his superiors,
who sometimes found it difficult to abide his Creole touchiness off the
field of battle for the sake of his undoubted abilities on it. Called "Old
Bory" by his men, though he was not yet forty-five, the Hero of Sum-
ter had twice been relieved of important commands, first in the East,
where he had routed McDowell's invasion attempt at Manassas, then in
the West, where he had saved his badly outnumbered army by giving
Halleck the slip at Corinth, and now he was back on the scene of his
first glory in Charleston harbor. Here, as elsewhere, he saw his position
as the hub of the wheel of war. Defying Union sea power, Mobile on
the Gulf and Wilmington, Savannah, and Charleston on the Atlantic re-
mained in Confederate hands, and of these four it was clear at least to
Beauregard that the one the Federals coveted most was the last, vari-
ously referred to in their journals as "the hotbed of treachery," "the
cradle of secession," and "the nursery of disunion." Industrious as al-
ways, the general was determined that this proud South Carolina city
should not suffer the fate of his native New Orleans, no matter what
force the Yankees brought against it. Conducting frequent tours of in-
spection and keeping up as usual a voluminous correspondence — a
steady stream of requisitions for more guns and men, more warships
and munitions, nearly all of which were returned to him regretfully un-
filled — he only relaxed from his duties when he slept, and even then
he kept a pencil and a note pad under his pillow, ready to jot down any
notion that came to him in the night. "Carolinians and Georgians!" he
exhorted by proclamation. "The hour is at hand to prove your devo-
tion to your country's cause. Let all able-bodied men, from the seaboard
[222] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
to the mountains, rush to arms. Be not exacting in the choice of weap-
ons; pikes and scythes will do for exterminating your enemies, spades
and shovels for protecting your friends. To arms, fellow citizens! Come
share with us our dangers, our brilliant success, or our glorious death."
Two approaches to Charleston were available to the Federals.
They could make an amphibious landing on one of the islands or up one
of the inlets to the south, then swing northeastward up the mainland to
move upon the city from the rear; or they could enter through the har-
bor itself, braving the massed batteries for the sake of a quick decision,
however bloody. Twice already they had tried the former method, but
both times — first at Secessionville, three months before Beauregard's
return from the West in mid-September, and again at Pocotaligo, one
month after he reassumed command — they had been stopped and flung
back on their naval support before they could gather momentum. This
time he thought it probable that they would attempt the front-door ap-
proach, using their new flotilla of vaunted ironclads to spearhead the
attack. If so, they were going to find they had taken on a good deal
more than they expected; for the harbor defenses had been greatly im-
proved during the nearly two years that had elapsed since the war first
opened here. Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, and Fort Sumter, respec-
tively on Sullivan's Island, off the mouth of the Cooper River, and op-
posite the entrance to the bay, had not only been strengthened, each in
its own right, but now they were supported by other fortifications con-
structed at intervals along the beaches and connected by a continuous
line of signal stations, making it possible for a central headquarters, it-
self transferrable, to direct and consolidate their fire. First Beauregard,
then Pemberton, and now Beauregard again — both accomplished en-
gineers and artillerists, advised moreover by staffs of specialists as expert
as themselves — had applied all their skill and knowledge to make the
place as nearly impregnable as military science and Confederate re-
sources would allow. A total of seventy-seven guns of various calibers
now frowned from their various embrasures, in addition to which the
harbor channels were thickly sown with torpedoes and other obstruc-
tions, such as floating webs of hemp designed to entangle rudders and
snarl propellers. Not content with this, the sad-eyed little Creole had
not hesitated to dip into his limited supply of powder in order to im-
prove the marksmanship of his cannoneers with frequent target prac-
tice. Like his idol Napoleon he believed in a lucky star, but he was leav-
ing as little as possible to chance; for which reason he had set marker
buoys at known ranges in the bay, with the corresponding elevations
chalked on the breeches of the guns. As a last-ditch measure of despera-
tion, to be employed if all else failed, he encouraged the organization
of a unit known as the Tigers, made up of volunteers whose assignment
was to hurl explosives down the smokestacks of such enemy ships as
managed to break through the ring of fire and approach the fortress
Death of a Soldier [ 223 ]
walls or the city docks. The ironclads might indeed be invincible; some
said so, some said not; but one thing was fairly certain. The argument
was likely to be settled on the day their owners tested them in Charles-
ton harbor.
This was not to say that Beauregard had abandoned all notion of
assuming the offensive, however limited his means. He had at his dis-
posal two homemade rams, the Palmetto State and the Chicora, built
with funds supplied by the South Carolina legislature and the Ladies'
Gunboat Fair. The former mounted an 80-pounder rifle aft and an 8-
inch shell gun on each broadside, while the latter had two 9-inch
smoothbores and four rifled 3 2 -pounders. Both were balky and slow,
with cranky, inadequate engines and armor improvised from boiler
plate and railroad iron, but as January drew to a close the general was
determined to put them to the test by challenging the blockade squadron
off the Charleston bar. Orders were handed Flag Officer Duncan In-
graham on the 30th, instructing him to make the attempt at dawn of the
following day. Beauregard meanwhile had in mind a more limited offen-
sive of his own, to be launched against the Q-gun screw steamer Isaac
Smith, which had been coming up the Stono River almost nightly to
shell the Confederate camps on James and John's islands. That night he
lay in wait for her with batteries of field artillery, allowed her to pass
unchallenged, then took her under fire as she came back down. The
opening volley tore off her stack, stopped her engines, riddled her life-
boats, and killed eight of her crew. Her captain quickly surrendered
himself and his ship and the 94 survivors, including 17 wounded. Re-
paired and rechristened, the Smith became the Stono and served under
that name as part of Charleston's miniature defense squadron, the rest
of which was already on its way across the bay, under cover of dark-
ness, in accordance with Ingraham's orders to try his hand at lifting the
Union blockade.
Palmetto State and Chicora, followed by three steam tenders
brought along to tow them back into the harbor in case their engines
failed, were over the bar and among the wooden-walled blockaders by
first light. Mounting a total of one hundred guns, the Federal squadron
included the 1200-ton sloop-of-war Housatonic, two gunboats, and
seven converted merchantmen. A lookout aboard one of these last, the
9-gun steamer Mercedita, was the first to spot the misty outline of an
approaching vessel. "She has black smoke!" he shouted. "Watch, man
the guns! Spring the rattle! Call all hands to quarters!" This brought the
captain out on deck, clad only in a pea jacket. When he too spotted the
stranger, nearer now, he cupped his hands about his mouth and called
out: "Steamer, ahoy! You will be into us! What steamer is that?" It was
the Palmetto State, but for a time she did not deign to answer. Then:
"Halloo!" her skipper finally replied, and with that the ram put her
snout into the quarter of the Mercedita and fired her guns. Flames went
[224] THE CIVIL WAR»1863
up from the crippled steamer. "Surrender," the rebel captain yelled up,
"or I'll sink you!" The only answer was a cloud of oily smoke shot
through with steam. "Do you surrender?" he repeated. This brought
the reply, "I can make no resistance; my boiler is destroyed!" "Then do
you surrender?" "Yes!" So the Palmetto State backed off, withdrawing
her snout, and turned to go to the help of the Chicora, which mean-
while had been serving the io-gun sidewheel steamer Keystone State in
much the same fashion. Riddled and aflame, the Federal hauled down
her flag to signify surrender, then ran it up again and limped out to sea
as the two rams moved off in the opposite direction. At the far end of
the line, the Housatonic and the gunboats held their station, thinking
the racket had been provoked by a blockade runner venturing out. By
full daylight the two improvised ironclads were back in Charleston har-
bor, their crews accepting the cheers of a crowd collected on the docks.
Beauregard was elated by the double coup. Quick to claim that
the blockade had been lifted, at least for a time, he took the French and
Spanish consuls out to witness the truth of his words that "the outer
harbor remained in the full possession of the two Confederate rams.
Not a Federal sail was visible, even with spyglasses." Next day the
blockaders were back again, presumably too vigilant now to permit him
to risk another such attempt, but he did not admit that this detracted in
the slightest from the brilliance of the exploit. He bided his time, still
improving his defenses for the all-out attack which he believed was
about to be launched. "Already six monitors . . . are in the waters of my
department, concentrating about Port Royal, and transports with
troops are still arriving from the North," he reported in mid-March. "I
believe the drama will not much longer be delayed; the curtain will soon
rise." Three more weeks went past before his prediction was fulfilled.
Then on Monday, April 6, the day after Easter — it was also the first
anniversary of Shiloh and within a week of the second anniversary of
the opening of the war in this same harbor — not six but nine brand-
new Union ironclads, some single- and some double-turreted, crossed
the Charleston bar and dropped anchor in the channel, bringing their
great 15-inch guns to bear on the forts and batteries Beauregard had
prepared for their reception. The curtain had indeed risen.
Rear Admiral Samuel Du Pont had the flag. It was he who, back
in early November of 1861, had conceived and executed the elliptical
attack on Port Royal, thereby giving the North its first substantial vic-
tory of the war, and it was hoped by his superiors — his desk-bound
superiors in Washington, that is, for he had no superiors afloat — that
he would repeat the triumph here in Charleston harbor. Son of a wealthy
New York importer and nephew of an even wealthier Delaware pow-
der maker, the admiral was approaching sixty, a hale, well-set-up aristo-
crat with a dignified but genial manner and a growth of luxuriant
Death of a Soldier [ 225 ]
whiskers describing a bushy U about his chops and under his clean-
shaven mouth and chin, all of which combined to give at least one jour-
nalist the impression that he was "one of the stateliest, handsomest, and
most polished gentlemen I have ever seen." Gideon Welles admired him,
too; up to a point. "He is a skillful and accomplished officer," the Secre-
tary confided in his diary. "Has a fine address, [but] is a courtier with
perhaps too much finesse and management." This edge of mistrust was
returned by the man who was its object. It seemed to Du Pont, whose
enthusiasm had been tempered by close association, that the Navy De-
partment was suffering from an affliction which might have been diag-
nosed as "ironclads on the brain."
This had not always been the case, particularly in the days when
John Ericsson was trying to persuade the brass to give him authority for
construction of the Monitor. Grudgingly, despite grave objections, they
had finally let him go ahead with a contract which stipulated that he
would not be reimbursed in case of failure. But after Hampton Roads
and the draw engagement that put an end to the overnight depreda-
tions of the Merrimac, the Department not only reversed itself, but
went all-out in the opposite direction. Ericsson received an order for
half a dozen sister ships of the one already delivered, and other builders
were engaged for the construction of twenty-one more, of various
shapes and sizes. Assistant Secretary Fox was especially enthusiastic, in-
forming Du Pont that after he had used the new-fangled warships to
reduce Charleston he was to move on to Savannah, then send them
down to the Gulf to give Mobile the same treatment. Ironclads were
trumps, according to Fox. He told Ericsson he had not "a shadow of a
doubt as to our success, and this confidence arises from a study of your
marvelous vessels." The Swede was less positive. "The most I dare
hope is that the contest will end without loss of that prestige which your
ironclads have conferred upon the nation abroad," he replied, adding
the reminder: "A single shot may sink a ship, while a hundred rounds
cannot silence a fort." Unwilling to have his confidence undermined or
his ebullience lessened, Fox assured a congressional committee that the
monitors (such was the generic name, adopted in honor of the first of
what was intended to be a long line of invincible vessels) could steam
into southern harbors, flatten the defenses, and emerge unscathed. His
only note of caution was injected into a dispatch addressed to Du Pont.
"I beg of you," he pleaded, "not to let the Army spoil it." He wanted
the show to be all Navy, with the landsmen merely standing by to be
ferried in to pick up the pieces when the smoke cleared. In late March,
having gained nothing from nudging Porter with the promise of a rib-
boned star and permanent promotion, he informed Du Pont that it was
up to him to make up for the reverses lately suffered in the West: "Far-
ragut has had a setback at Port Hudson and lost the noble old Missis-
sippi. It finally devolves upon you by great good fortune to avert the
[226] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
series of disasters that have fallen upon our Navy. That you will do it
most gloriously I have no misgivings whatever."
In point of fact, Du Pont by this time had misgivings enough
for them both. What was more, these doubts were shared by a majority
of his ironclad skippers — and with cause. Near the mouth of the Ogee-
chee River, just beyond the Georgia line, the Confederates had con-
structed as part of the Savannah defenses a Q-gun earthwork called Fort
McAllister, which Du Pont decided to use as a sort of test range to de-
termine how well the monitors would do, offensively and defensively,
under fire. He gave the reduction assignment to the Montauk, which
meant that he was giving the best he had; for her captain was Com-
mander John L. Worden, who had skippered the Monitor in her fight
with the Merrimac. Worden made his first attack on January 27 and,
after expending all his ammunition in a four-hour bombardment, with-
drew undamaged despite repeated hits scored by the guns of the fort,
which was not silenced. Returning February 1 he tried again, with like
results. Neither the ship nor the fort had done much damage to the
other, aside from the concussive strain on the eardrums of the Mon-
tauk's crew from the forty-six hits taken on her iron decks and turret.
A third attack, February 27, was more fruitful, although not in the way
intended. Finding the rebel cruiser Nashville aground beyond Fort Mc-
Allister, Worden took her under long-range fire with his 11- and 15-inch
guns, set her ablaze, and had the satisfaction of watching her destruction
when her magazine exploded. Struck only five times by the guns of the
fort, the ironclad pulled back without replying, well satisfied with her
morning's work, only to run upon a torpedo which blew such a hole in
her bottom that she had to be beached in the mud at the mouth of the
river. While she was undergoing repairs that soon restored her to full
efficiency, three more monitors came down from Port Royal on March
3 and tried their hand with an eight-hour bombardment of the fort:
with similar results. Neither silenced or seriously damaged the other,
and the ironclads withdrew to try no more.
Fruitless though the experiment had been in positive results —
aside, that is, from the fortunate interception of the Nashville — a lesson
had been learned, on the negative side, as to the capabilities of the moni-
tors. "Whatever degree of impenetrability they might have," Du Pont
reported, "there was no corresponding degree of destructiveness as
against forts." He felt much as one sailor had felt on a test run. "Give
me an oyster-scow!" the man had cried. "Anything — only let it be of
wood, and something that will float over instead of under the water."
Most of the captains were of a similar mind, and when they looked
beyond the present to the impending future, their doubts increased. If
these vaunted engines of destruction could not humble a modest 9-gun
sand fort, what could they hope to accomplish against multi-gunned
bastions like Sumter and Moultrie? They asked the question and shook
Death of a Soldier [ 227 ]
their heads. "I do not feel as sure as I could wish," one skipper ad-
mitted, while another was more positive in expressing his reservations.
"I begin to rue the day I got into the iron clad business," he wrote home.
Still, orders were orders, and as April came in Du Pont com-
pleted his final preparations for the attack. In addition to his flagship the
New Ironsides, a high-bulwarked 3500-ton frigate whose ponderous
armor and twenty heavy guns mounted in broadside made her the most
powerful battleship in the world, he had eight low-riding monitors,
mounting one or two guns each in revolving turrets: which meant that,
in all, he would be opposing 77 guns ashore with 33 afloat. These odds
were rather evened by the fact that the naval guns, in addition to being
mounted on moving targets, which made them far more difficult to hit,
were heavier in caliber and threw about an equal weight of metal. Other
odds were irreducible, however, one being that in order to reach the
city from the sea his ships would have to steam for seven winding miles
in a shoal-lined channel, much of which had been fiendishly obstructed
and practically all of which was exposed to the plunging fire of forts
whose gun crews had been anticipating for months this golden oppor-
tunity to disprove the claim that monitors were indestructible. On April
2, despite increasing doubts and reservations, Du Pont left Port Royal
and reached Edisto Island, twenty-odd miles below the entrance to
Charleston harbor, before nightfall. There the ships were cleared for
action, the exposed armor of their decks and turrets covered over with
slippery untanned hides and their bulwarks slopped with grease to les-
sen the "bite" of enemy projectiles. (That at least was the hoped-for
effect, when the vessels should come under fire. The more immediate re-
sult, however, was that they stank fearfully under the influence of the
Carolina sun.) On the 5th — Easter Sunday — they cleared North
Edisto and crossed the Charleston bar next morning. Du Pont had in-
tended to attack at once, but finding the weather hazy, which as he
said "prevent [ed] our seeing the ranges," he decided to drop anchors
and wait for tomorrow, in hopes that it would afford him better visibil-
ity. (It would also afford the same for the gunners in the forts; but Du
Pont was not thinking along these lines, or else he would have made a
night attack.) Finally, against his better judgment — and after much
prodding from above, including jeers that he had "the slows" and taunts
that identified him as a sea-going McClellan, overcautious and too mind-
ful of comparative statistics — he was going in.
Tomorrow — April 7 — brought the weather he thought he
wanted, and soon after noon the iron column started forward, the nine
ships moving in single file, slowly and with a certain ponderous majesty
not lost on the beholders in the forts. Originally the admiral had in-
tended to lead the way in the flagship, but on second thought he de-
cided to take the center position from which "signals could be better
[228]
THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
made to both ends of the line," so that the resultant order of battle was
Weehawken, Passaic, Montauk, Patapsco; New Ironsides; Catskill,
Nantucket, Nahant, Keokuk. There was an exasperating delay of about
an hour when the lead monitor's heavy anchor chain became entangled
with the bootjack raft designed to protect her bow from torpedoes;
then the column resumed its forward motion, passing Morris Island in
an ominous silence as the rebel cannoneers on Cummings Point held
their fire. As the ships approached the inner works, however, the Con-
federate and Palmetto flags were hoisted over Sumter and Moultrie,
while bands on the parapets struck up patriotic airs and the guns began
to roar in salute. Captain John Rodgers of the Weehawken, spotting
the rope obstructions dead ahead, commanded the helmsman to swing
hard to starboard in order to avoid becoming entangled in the web and
immobilized under the muzzles of guns whose projectiles were already
hammering the monitor like an anvil. This was well short of the point
at which Du Pont had intended to open fire, however, and the result
was that the whole line was thrown into confusion by the abrupt neces-
sity, confronting each ship in rapid sequence, of avoiding a collision with
the ship ahead. Moreover, as the Weehawken turned she encountered a
torpedo which exploded directly under her. "It lifted the vessel a lit-
tle," Rodgers later reported, "but I am unable to perceive that it has
done us any damage."
Aboard the flagship, with
her deeper draft, the confusion
was at its worst. When she
lost headway she had to drop
her anchor to keep from going
aground, and as she hung there,
trying to get her nose into the
tide, she received two disconcert-
ing butts from two of the moni-
tors astern as they swept past in
response to her signal to move
up and join the action. Hoisting
anchor at last, the Ironsides
chugged forward a short distance, only to have to drop it again in order
to avoid piling up on a shoal. This brought her, unbeknownst, directly
over a huge submerged torpedo which the Confederates had fashioned by
packing an old boiler with explosives and connecting it to an observation
post ashore, to be used to detonate the charge at the proper time. Now
the proper time was very much at hand; the rebel electrician later said
that if he himself had been allowed to spot the Yankee flagship he could
not have placed her more precisely where he wanted her. However, his
elation quickly faded, turning first to dismay and then to disgust, when
the detonating mechanism failed time after time to send a spark to the
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Xw*y « obstructions : ^^'"^V
James ( (h " « *****
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Death of a Soldier [ 229 ]
underwater engine of destruction. Meanwhile, happily unaware that he
and his ship were in mortal danger of being hoisted skyward in sudden
flame and smoke, Du Pont signaled the monitors to "disregard motions
of commander in chief" and continue to press the attack without his
help. The Ironsides, as one of her surgeons complained, was as com-
pletely out of the fight as if she had been moored to a dock in the
Philadelphia Navy Yard, but this did not prevent her taking long-range
punishment from the rebel guns. Presenting if not the closest, then at
any rate the largest and least mobile target in the harbor, she was struck
no less than ninety-five times in the course of the engagement. Despite
the din, according to one of her officers, "the sense of security the iron
walls gave to those within was wonderful, a feeling akin to that which
one experiences in a heavy storm when the wind and hail beat harm-
lessly against the windows of a well-protected house."
No such feeling was experienced by the crews of the monitors,
the officer added; "for in their turrets the nuts that secured the lami-
nated plates flew wildly, to the injury and discomfiture of the men at
the guns." Up closer, they were harder hit. "The shots literally rained
around them," a correspondent wrote, "splashing the water up thirty
feet in the air, and striking and booming from their decks and turrets."
The flagship was a mile from Sumter, the nearest monitors about half
that far, but the captain of the twin-turreted N ah ant quickly found
what it would cost to close the range. "Mr Clarke, you haven't hit
anything yet," he protested to the ensign in charge of the 15-inch gun,
which was throwing its 420-pound shells at seven-minute intervals.
When the young man replied, "We aint near enough, Captain," the skip-
per went into a rage. "Not near enough? God damn it," he cried, "I'll
put you near enough! Starboard your helm, Quartermaster!" As the
ship came about, a rebel projectile slammed against the sight-slit, kill-
ing the helmsman and mangling the pilot. "Retire! Retire!" the captain
shouted. Others caught it as hard or harder, with similar results:
smokestacks perforated, turrets jammed, decks ripped up, guns knocked
out of action. The only effect on the enemy a journalist could see, ex-
amining the brick northeast face of Sumter through his glasses, was that
of "increasing pock marks and discolorations on the walls, as if there
had been a sudden breaking out of cutaneous disease." But there was no
corresponding slackening of fire from within the fort, whose can-
noneers were jubilant over the many hits they scored. Frenzied at being
kept from a share in the fun of pummeling the ironclads, Confederates
locked in the Moultrie guardhouse screamed above the roar of the bom-
bardment: "For God's sake, let us come out and go to the guns! "
After peering through the drifting smoke for about two hours,
Du Pont was told that it was nearly 5 o'clock. "Make signal to the ships
to drop out of fire," he said quietly. "It is too late to fight this battle
tonight. We will renew it early in the morning." Below decks, when the
[230] THE CIVIL WAR»-1863
gun captains received word of this decision, they sent up an urgent re-
quest that they be allowed to fire at least one broadside before retiring.
It was granted, and as the Ironsides turned to steam down the channel
an eight-gun salvo was hurled at Moultrie, the only shots she fired in
the course of the engagement. This brought the total to an even 150
rounds expended by the flotilla, and of these 55 were scored as hits. The
Confederates, on the other hand, had fired 2209, of which no less than
441 had found their mark, despite the fact that the targets had not only
been comparatively small, and moving, but had also been mostly sub-
merged. That this was remarkably effective shooting Du Pont himself
began to appreciate when the retiring monitors came within hailing dis-
tance of the flagship and he got a close-up look at their condition. The
first to approach was the Keokuk, limping badly. Last in and first out,
she had ventured nearest to Sumter's 44 guns, and she had the scars of
90 point-blank hits to prove it. She was "riddled like a colander," one
witness remarked, "the most severely mauled ship one ever saw." That
night, in fact, she keeled over and sank at her anchorage off Morris Is-
land. Others also had been roughly handled; Weehaivken had taken 53
hits, Na?itucket 51, Fatapsco 47, Nahant 36, Passaic 35, Catskill 20, and
Montauk 14. In general, the damage suffered was in inverse ratio to the
individual distance between them and the rebel guns, and none had been
closer than 600 yards.
The admiral's intention to "renew [the battle] early in the
morning" was modified by the sight of his crippled monitors. Five of the
eight were too badly damaged to be able to engage if ordered, and of
these five, one would sink before the scheduled time for action. Equally
conclusive were the reports and recommendations of the several captains
when they came aboard the flagship that evening. "With your present
means," John Rodgers advised, "I could not, if I were asked, recom-
mend a renewal of the attack." The redoubtable Worden was no less
emphatic. "After testing the weight of the enemy's fire, and observing
the obstructions," he reported, "I am led to believe that Charleston can-
not be taken by the naval force now present, and that had the attack
been continued [today] it could not have failed to result in disaster."
This gave Du Pont pause, and pausing he reflected on the risks. Here
was no New Orleans, where the problem had been to run the fleet
through a brief, furious gauntlet of fire in order to gain a safe haven
above the forts and place a defenseless city under the muzzles of its
guns; this was Charleston, whose harbor, in the words of a staff offi-
cer, "was a cul-de-sac, a circle of fire not to be passed." The deeper you
penetrated the circle, the more you were exposed to destruction from its
rim. Moreover, as the admiral saw the outcome, even if he pressed the
attack "in the end we shall retire, leaving some of our ironclads in the
hands of the enemy, to be refitted and turned against our blockade with
deplorable effect." This last was unthinkable — though he thought about
Death of a Soldier [231]
it in his cabin all night long. By daybreak he had made up his mind. "I
have decided not to renew the attack," he told his chief of staff. "We
have met with a sad repulse; I shall not turn it into a great disaster."
Next afternoon he recrossed the bar. "I attempted to take the
bull by the horns, but he was too much for us," he admitted to the army
commander whose troops had been standing by to pick up the pieces.
By the end of the week the flotilla again was riding at anchor inside Port
Royal, swarmed over by armorers hammering the vessels back into
shape. The admiral knew the reaction in Washington would be severe,
coming as it did on the heels of such great expectations, but he also knew
that he had the support of his monitor captains, who stood, as one of
them said, "like a wall of iron" around his reputation, agreeing with his
chief of staff's opinion that "Admiral Du Pont never showed greater
courage or patriotism than when he saved his ships and men, and sacri-
ficed himself to the clamor and disappointment evoked by his defeat."
In point of fact, however, part of the expressed disappointment, if not
the outright clamor, occurred within the fleet itself. A chief engineer
was clapped in arrest for complaining in his ship's mess that the attack
had not been pressed to the victory point, and at least one junior officer
remarked wryly that "the grim sort of soul like Farragut was lacking."
Welles and Fox, though hot enough at the outcome and in no doubt at
all as to where the blame lay, were considerably hampered in their criti-
cisms by the political necessity for delay in bringing the matter out into
the open with the publication of the adverse battle reports. After all, it
was they — especially Fox — who had announced that the monitors
were irresistible, and contracts already had been signed for the delivery
of eighteen more of the expensive naval monsters. Two weeks after the
repulse, Welles was attempting to shrug it off by telling his diary: "I am
by no means confident that we are acting wisely in expending so much
strength and effort on Charleston, a place of no strategic importance."
The grapes had soured for him; but not for Beauregard. The
Louisiana general's only regrets were that the boiler-torpedo had not
gone off beneath the Ironsides and that the Yankees had slunk away
without attempting a renewal of the assault, which he felt certain would
have been even more decisively repulsed. In a congratulatory address
to his troops, his enthusiasm knew no bounds. He spoke of "the stranded,
riddled wreck" of the Keokuk, whose big guns now were part of the
harbor defenses, and of the ignominious flight of "her baffled coadju-
tors," whose defeat had reinspired world-wide confidence in the ulti-
mate and glorious triumph of the Confederate cause. In his official report
to Richmond, though — for he had recently confided to a friend that,
from now on, he was adopting a more restrained style in his dispatches,
in order to counteract a rumor that he was prone to exaggerate his ac-
complishments — the little Creole, with his bloodhound eyes, his
swarthy face, and his hair brushed forward in lovelocks at the temples,
[232] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
contented himself for the most part with factual observations. "It may
be accepted, as shown," he wrote, "that these vaunted monitor batteries,
though formidable engines of war, after all are not invulnerable or in-
vincible, and may be destroyed or defeated by heavy ordnance, properly
placed and skillfully handled." However, in the glow and warmth of
congratulations being pressed upon him, including one that he had made
Sumter "a household word, like Salamis and Thermopylae," he could not
resist the temptation to add a closing flourish to the report: "My expec-
tations were fully realized, and the country, as well as the State of South
Carolina, may well be proud of the men who first met and vanquished
the iron-mailed, terribly armed armada, so confidently prepared and sent
forth by the enemy to certain and easy victory."
X 2 X
Though he grew snappish at the first report that the fleet had been re-
pulsed — "Hold your position inside the bar near Charleston," he in-
structed Du Pont in a message sent posthaste down the coast; "or, if
you shall have left it, return to it, and hold it till further orders" — Lin-
coln was in a better frame of mind for the reception of bad news than
he had been for months. The reason for this was that he had just re-
turned from a five-day Easter vacation combined with a highly satis-
factory inspection of the Army of the Potomac, whose tents were
pitched along the Rappahannock in the vicinity of Falmouth. The visit
was a heartening experience, not only because it showed him that the
condition of the troops was excellent, but also because it abolished his
main previous doubt as to the fitness of the man he had appointed as their
commander. After saying, "Now there is Joe Hooker. He can fight. I
think that is pretty well established," Lincoln had added: "But whether
he can 'keep tavern' for a large army is not so sure." If the trip down the
bay had done nothing else, it had reassured the President on that score.
Fighting Joe had taken hold with a vengeance, and the results were plain
to see on the faces and in the attitude of the men. Fredericksburg and
the Mud March, though the letters of the former were embroidered on
the rippling blue of their regimental colors, were no longer even a part
of their vocabulary.
Hooker could indeed keep tavern. Within a week of his assumption
of command he jolted the commissary department by ordering the issue
of rations expanded to include fresh vegetables and soft bread; he super-
vised a thorough cleanup of the unsanitary camps, shrinking the over-
long sick lists in the process, and he instituted a liberal system of fur-
loughs which, combined with a tightening of security regulations, did
much to reduce desertion. "Ah! the furloughs and vegetables he gave!"
one infantryman still marveled years later, "How he did understand the
Death of a Soldier [ 233 ]
road to the soldier's heart!" In the midst of all this welcome reform,
army paymasters came down from Washington with bulging satchels
and surprised the troops with six months' back pay. It was no wonder
another veteran recalled that "cheerfulness, good order, and military
discipline at once took the place of grumbling, depression, and want of
confidence." Idleness, that breeder of discontent, was abolished by a re-
vival of the old-time grand reviews, with regiment after regiment
swinging past the reviewing stand so that when the men executed the
command "eyes right" they saw their chieftain's clean-shaven face light
up with pleasure at seeing their appearance improved by their diurnal
spit-and-polish preparations. Unit pride, being thus encouraged, in-
creased even more when Hooker, expanding the use of the so-called
Kearny patch — a device improvised by the late Phil Kearny, about this
time last year, to identify the men of his division in the course of their
march up the York- James peninsula — ordered the adoption of corps
insignia of various shapes, cut from red, white, or blue cloth, thus indi-
cating the first, second, or third division, and stitched to the crown of
the caps of the troops, so that he and they could tell at a glance what
corps and division a man was gracing or disgracing, on duty or off.
Moreover, after the gruff and dish-faced Pope and the flustered and
fantastically whiskered Burnside, Hooker himself, by the force of his
personality and the handsomeness of his presence, infused some of the
old McClellan magnetism into the reviving army's ranks. "Apollo-like,"
a Wisconsin major called the forty-eight-year-old Massachusetts-born
commander, and a visiting editor wrote of him as "a man of unusually
handsome face and elegant proportions, with a complexion as delicate
and silken as a woman's." Another remarked, along this same line, that
the general looked "as rosy as the most healthy woman alive."
Some claimed that this glow, this rosiness, had its origin in the
bottle (the men themselves apparently took pride in the assertion;
"Joe Hooker is our leader —
He takes his whiskey strong!"
they sang as they set off on practice marches) while other dissenters
from the prevalent chorus of praise, although admitting that the general
was "handsome and picturesque in the extreme," directed attention to
what one of them called his "fatally weak chin." Still others believed
they detected inner flaws, below the rosy surface. "He could play the
best game of poker I ever saw," a former West Coast intimate recol-
lected, "until it came to the point when he should go a thousand better,
and then he would flunk." But the harshest judgment of all came from a
cavalry officer, Charles F. Adams, Jr. According to this son of the am-
bassador to England, the new commander was "a noisy, low-toned in-
triguer" under whose influence army headquarters became "a place to
[234] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
which no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman could
go. It was a combination of barroom and brothel." Young Adams' own
"tone" was exceptionally high, which made him something less than tol-
erant of the weakness of others — particularly the weaknesses of the
flesh, from which he himself apparently was exempt — but in support
of at least a part of the accusation was the fact that, from this time on,
the general's surname entered the language as one of the many lower-
case slang words for prostitute. As for the rest, however, a friend who
was with him almost daily insisted that Hooker had gone on the wagon
the day he took command. Headquarters might have some of the aspects
of a barroom, as Adams said, but according to this observer the general
himself did not imbibe.
The fact was, it did indeed appear that he as well as the army had
experienced a basic change of character. Much of his former bluster was
gone; he had even acquired a dislike for his nom-de-guerre, though per-
haps this was largely because the story was beginning to get around that
he had come by it as the result of an error made in a New York com-
posing room during the Peninsula Campaign, when a last-minute dis-
patch arrived from the front with additional news involving his division.
"Fighting — Joe Hooker," the follow-up was tagged, indicating that it
was to be added to what had gone before, but the typesetter dropped
the dash and it was printed as a separate story, under the resultant head-
ing. The nickname stuck despite the general's objections. "Don't call me
Fighting Joe," he said. "[It] makes the public think that I am a hot-
headed, furious young fellow, accustomed to making furious and need-
less dashes at the enemy." Nor was this the only change in Hooker. All
his military life, at West Point, in Mexico, and in the peacetime army —
from which he had resigned in 1853, after sixteen years of service, in
order to take up California farming and civil engineering, only to fail at
both so utterly that when news came that the war had begun his friends
had to pass the hat to get up money for his fare back East — he had
been quick to resent the authority and criticize the conduct of his su-
periors. Just recently, he had sneered at the President and the Cabinet as
a flock of bunglers and had asserted that what the country needed was a
dictator, making it more or less clear that the man he had in mind for
the job was himself. Now, though, all that had gone by the board. He
had not even resented Lincoln's "beware of rashness. Beware of rashness"
letter, calling him to account for his derogations while appointing him
to command the army. Soon afterwards, in the privacy of his tent,
Hooker read the letter to a journalist, only taking exception to the
charge that he had "thwarted" Burnside. "The President is mistaken. I
never thwarted Burnside in any way, shape, or manner," he broke off
reading to say — though even now he could not resist adding: "Burnside
was pre-eminently a man of deportment. He fought the battle of Freder-
icksburg on his deportment; he was defeated on his deportment; and he
Death of a Soldier [ 235 ]
took his deportment with him out of the Army of the Potomac, thank
God." He returned to the letter, and when he had finished reading it he
folded it and put it back into his breast pocket, as if to emphasize the
claim that he had taken it to heart. "That is just such a letter as a father
might write to his son," he mused aloud, and the reporter thought he
saw tears beginning to mist the general's pale blue-gray eyes. "It is a
beautiful letter," Hooker went on, "and although I think he was harder
on me than I deserved, I will say that I love the man who wrote it."
Again he paused. Then he said, "After I have got to Richmond I shall
give that letter to you to have published."
This last, variously phrased as "When I get to Richmond" or
"After we have taken Richmond," cropped up more frequently in his
talk as the spirit and strength of his army grew, and it was one of the
few things that struck Lincoln unfavorably when he arrived for his
Easter visit. "If you get to Richmond, General — " he remarked at their
first conference, only to have Hooker break in with "Excuse me, Mr
President, but there is no 'if in this case. I am going straight to Richmond
if I live." Lincoln let it pass, though afterwards he said privately to a
friend: "That is the most depressing thing about Hooker. It seems to me
that he is over-confident." Presently, however, as the inspection tour
progressed, he began to see for himself that the general's ready assurance
was solidly based on facts and figures. Even after the detachment of
Burnside's old corps — which took with it, down the coast to Newport
News, whatever resentment its members might be feeling as a result of
the supersession of their former chief — Hooker still had seven others,
plus a newly consolidated corps of cavalry, including in all no less than
twenty divisions of infantry and three of horsemen, here on the Rappa-
hannock, with a present-for-duty total of 133,450 effectives, supported
by seventy batteries of artillery with a total of 4 1 2 guns. Across the way,
the Confederates had less than half as many men and a good deal less
than half as many guns, and Hooker not only knew the approximate
odds, he was also preparing to take advantage of them. On the eve of
Lincoln's arrival he had put his corps commanders on the alert by order-
ing all surplus baggage sent to the rear, and he had warned the War
Department to have siege equipment ready for shipment to him in front
of the rebel capital. In addition to 10,000 shovels, 5000 picks, 5000 axes,
and 30,000 sandbags, he wanted authentic maps of the Richmond de-
fenses, to be used in laying out saps and parallels, and he requested that
a flotilla of supply boats be kept standing by at all times, ready to de-
liver 1,500,000 rations up the Pamunkey River as soon as the army got
that far. He did not say "if," he said "as soon as," and when this was re-
peated at Falmouth on Easter Sunday Lincoln shook his head in some
perplexity. He admired determination and self-reliance, especially in a
military man, but he also knew there was such a thing as whistling in
the dark. He had known men — John Pope, for one — who assumed
[236] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
those qualities to hide their doubts, not only from their associates but
also from themselves. In fact, the louder a man insisted that there was
no room for doubt in his make-up, the more likely he was to belong to
the whistler category, and Lincoln feared that Hooker's brashness might
be assumed for some such purpose. "It is about the worst thing I have
seen since I have been down here," he remarked.
Most of what he saw he found encouraging, however. He agreed
with Hooker's estimation of the army as "the finest on the planet," and
he particularly enjoyed the temporary relief the visit afforded him from
the day-to-day pressure of White House paperwork and the importuni-
ties of favor-seekers. Not that he was entirely delivered from the latter.
Now that the career officers had him where they could get at him, out
of channels and yet with no great strain on their ingrained sense of
propriety, they did not neglect the opportunity. Even so stiff a profes-
sional as Meade, whose testiness had caused his troops to refer to him as
"a God-damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle," could not resist the
chance to curry favor, difficult though he found it to unbend. "In view
of the vacant brigadiership in the regular army," he wrote his wife, "I
have ventured to tell the President one or two stories, and I think I have
made decided progress in his affections." But this was all comparatively
mild and even enjoyable — even the stories — in contrast to what the
Chief Executive had left behind, and presently would be returning to,
in Washington. What was more, his wife and younger son, who accom-
panied him on the outing, appeared to enjoy it every bit as much as he
did. Mary Lincoln responded happily to the all-too-rare opportunity of
being with her husband, in and out of office hours, and playing the role
of First Lady in a style she considered fitting. Riding one day through a
camp of Negro refugees, who crowded about the presidential carriage
and lifted their children overhead for a look at the Great Emancipator,
she asked her husband how many of "those piccaninnies" he supposed
were named Abraham Lincoln. "Let's see," he calculated. "This is April,
1863. 1 should say that of all those babies under two years of age perhaps
two thirds have been named for me." Mrs Lincoln, who enjoyed the no-
tion — it was fairly customary in her native Bluegrass for slaves to name
their offspring for the master — smiled. But ten-year-old Tad had an
entirely different notion of what was fun. He wanted to see some real,
live rebels. And Lincoln obliged him. Proceeding one blustery morning
to Stafford Heights, they looked across the Rappahannock and down into
the ruined streets of Fredericksburg, where the army had staged its two-
day carnival before crossing the "champaign tract" to be brought up
short in front of the sunken road at the foot of Marye's Heights, and to
Tad's delight they saw floating from the eaves of one of the town's few
unwrecked houses the Stars and Bars. Nearby, moreover, alongside a tall
scorched chimney like a monument erected to commemorate a home,
stood two sentinels: genuine, armed graybacks, though one of them —
Death of a Soldier [ 237 ]
perversely, as if to lessen Tad's pleasure — wore a light-blue U. S. Army
overcoat. Their voices faint with distance, they began yelling across the
river at the Yankee spectators, something about Fort Sumter and the
ironclads being "licked," which brought an officer out of one of the
Fredericksburg bomb-proofs to investigate the shouting. He took out
his binoculars, beginning to sweep the opposite heights, and when he
spotted the presidential group he paused, adjusted the focus, and peered
intently. Whether or not he recognized the tall form, made still taller
by the familiar stovepipe hat, they never knew; but at any rate he seemed
to. He lowered the glasses and struck an attitude of dignity, then re-
moved his wide-brimmed hat, made a low, formal bow, and retired.
For the Confederates across the way — less than 60,000 in all, in-
cluding the punctilious officer and the two sentinels, one of whom had
been lucky enough to scavenge a Yankee overcoat to put between him
and the chill of Virginia's early spring — there had been no correspond-
ing improvement, but rather a decline, in the quantity as well as the
quality of the supplies provided by their government. The basic daily ra-
tion at this time consisted of a quarter-pound of bacon, often rancid,
and eighteen ounces of cornmeal, including a high proportion of pul-
verized cob, supplemented about every third day by the issue of ten
pounds of rice to each one hundred men, along with an occasional few
peas and a scant handful of dried fruit when it was available, which was
seldom. "This may give existence to the troops while idle," Lee com-
plained to the War Department, "but [it] will certainly cause them to
break down when called upon for exertion." Scurvy had begun to ap-
pear, and though he attempted to combat this by sending out details to
gather sassafras buds, wild onions, and such antiscorbutics — together
with other, more substantial windfalls, unofficial and in fact illegal; "Ah,
General," he chided Hood, "when you Texans come about, the chickens
have to roost mighty high" — Lee felt, as he said, "painfully anxious lest
the spirit and efficiency of the men should become impaired, and they be
rendered unable to sustain their former reputation or perform the serv-
ice necessary for our safety."
Yet their morale was as high as ever, if not higher: not only be-
cause they managed to forget, or at least ignore, their hunger pangs by
staging regimental theatricals and minstrel shows, attending the mam-
moth prayer meetings which were a part of the great religious revival
that swept like wildfire through the army at this time, and organizing
brigade-size snowball battles which served much the same purpose on
this side of the river as Llooker's grand reviews were serving on the
other; but also because they could look back on a practically uninter-
rupted series of victories which they had grounds for believing would
be continued, whatever the odds. In the ten months Lee had been in com-
mand of the Army of Northern Virginia, including the past three spent
[238] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
in winter quarters, they had fought no less than thirteen battles, large
and small, and in all but one of these — South Mountain, where they had
been outnumbered ten to one — they had maintained the integrity of
their position from start to finish, and in all but one other — Sharpsburg,
where the odds were never better than one to three and mostly worse —
they had dominated the field when the smoke cleared. Although they
had generally assumed the more costly tactical role of the attacker, they
had inflicted more than 70,000 casualties, at a cost of less than 50,000 of
their own, and had captured about 75,000 small arms while losing fewer
than one tenth as many. In guns, the advantage was greatest of all in this
respect; losing 8, they had taken 155. ("I declare," a North Carolina
private said as his Federal captors were taking him rearward through
their lines. "You-uns has got about as many of them 'U.S.' guns as we
have.") The over-all result was confidence, in Lee and in themselves, and
a pride that burned fiercely despite privation and grim want. One Con-
federate, writing home, expressed amazement at the contrast between
the army's bedraggled appearance in camp and its efficiency in combat.
He marveled at the spirit of his companions, "so ragged, slovenly, sleeve-
less, without a superfluous ounce of flesh upon their bones, with wild
matted hair, in mendicants' rags — and to think when the battle-flag
goes to the front how they can and do fight! " Nor was praise of Lee's
scarecrow heroes limited to those who stood in his army's ranks. An ex-
changed Union officer, returning to his own lines this spring after a term
spent beyond them as a captive, put his first-hand observations on the
record in a letter home. "Their artillery horses are poor, starved frames
of beasts, tied to their carriages and caissons with odds and ends of rope
and strips of raw hide; their supply and ammunition trains look like a
congregation of all the crippled California emigrant trains that ever es-
caped off the desert out of the clutches of the rampaging Comanche In-
dians. The men are ill-dressed, ill-equipped, and ill-provided, a set of
ragamuffins that a man is ashamed to be seen among, even when he is a
prisoner and can't help it. And yet they have beaten us fairly, beaten us
all to pieces, beaten us so easily that we are objects of contempt even to
their commonest private soldiers, with no shirts to hang out the holes of
their pantaloons, and cartridge-boxes tied around their waists with
strands of rope."
Lee himself could silence grousing with a jest. "You ought not to
mind that," he reassured a young officer who complained about the
toughness of some biscuits; "they will stick by you the longer." He re-
ferred in much the same tone of levity to the threats made by his new
opponent, who had no sooner taken charge of the blue army than he
began showing signs of living up to his nickname, Fighting Joe. "General
Hooker is obliged to do something," the gray commander wrote home
in early February. "I do not know what it will be. He is playing the Chi-
nese game, trying what frightening will do. He runs out his guns, starts
Death of a Soldier [ 239 J
wagons and troops up and down the river, and creates an excitement
generally. Our men look on in wonder, give a cheer, and all again sub-
sides in statu quo ante bellum" When nothing came of all this show of
force before the month was out, Lee expressed a wry impatience. "I owe
Mr F. J. Hooker no thanks for keeping me here," he told his wife. "He
ought to have made up his mind long ago what to do." At the same time,
though, he was warning subordinates that the bluecoats would "make
every effort to crush us between now and June, and it will require all
our strength to resist them." His confidence, while as firm as that of the
men he led, did not cause him to ignore the present odds or the fact
that if they continued to lengthen they would stretch beyond endurance.
Within a month of the destructive but fruitless repulse of the Federal
host that ventured across the river in mid-December, he made his warn-
ing explicit in a dispatch to the Secretary of War. "More than once have
most promising opportunities been lost for want of men to take ad-
vantage of them, and victory itself has been made to put on the appear-
ance of defeat because our diminished and exhausted troops have been
unable to renew a successful struggle against fresh numbers of the en-
emy. The lives of our soldiers are too precious to be sacrificed in the at-
tainment of successes that inflict no loss upon the enemy beyond the ac-
tual loss in battle." And he added, with a new note of bitterness which
had come with the sack of Fredericksburg and the issuance of the Eman-
cipation Proclamation: "In view of the vast increase of the forces of the
enemy, of the savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves
us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we
would save the honor of our families from pollution [and] our social
system from destruction, let every effort be made, every means be em-
ployed, to fill and maintain the ranks of our armies, until God in his
mercy shall bless us with the establishment of our independence."
Instead of an increase, what followed hard on the heels of this
appeal was a drastic reduction of his fighting strength, beginning Janu-
ary 14 with the detachment of D. H. Hill to contest the further invasion
of the crusty Tarheel general's home state, presaged by the Federals'
mid-December advance on Goldsboro. Lee himself went to Richmond
two days later to confer with Davis on this and other problems, but
had to hurry back to the Rappahannock on the 1 8th — the eve of his
fifty-sixth birthday — when the high-level council of war was disrupted
by news that Burnside's army was astir in its camps around Falmouth.
As it turned out, all that came of this was the Mud March and Joe
Hooker's elevation; Lee detached Robert Ransom's demi-division, which
had played a leading role in Longstreet's defense of the sunken road the
month before, and sent it south to North Carolina, as he had agreed to
do at the interrupted strategy conference. Shortly afterwards, however,
word came that Burnside's old corps had boarded transports at Aquia
Landing and steamed down Chesapeake Bay to Hampton Roads. It
[240] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
seemed likely that these men were being returned to the scene of their
year-old triumph below Norfolk, with instructions to extend their con-
quest eastward to the Weldon Railroad, Lee's vital supply connection
with the factories and grainfields of Georgia and the Carolinas, or to
Petersburg, whose fall would give them access to the back door of the
capital itself. This two-pronged menace could not be ignored, whatever
risk might be involved in attempting to contest it by a further weaken-
ing of the Rappahannock line. On February 15 the dismemberment of
Longstreet's corps was resumed. Pickett's division was hastened south to
Richmond; Hood's followed two days later, accompanied by Old Peter
himself, who was charged with the defense of the region beyond the
James. These two divisions combined with the troops already there
would give him 44,000 men in all, whereas the Federals had 55,000 on
hand, exclusive of the corps that presumably was about to join them
from Hampton Roads. It was at best a chancy business for the Confed-
erates, north and south of their threatened capital; for even if these blue
reinforcements arrived, as was expected momentarily, the command on
the south side of the James would be no worse outnumbered than the
one on the south side of the Rappahannock, now that more than a fourth
of the latter's strength had been subtracted in favor of the former. All
Lee could do in this extremity was urge Longstreet to be ready to hurry
northward, if possible — that is, if he could find a way to disengage
without inviting the destruction of his command or the capture of Rich-
mond — as soon as he got word that Hooker had left off playing the
Chinese game and was on the move in earnest. "As our numbers will not
admit of our meeting [the enemy] on equality everywhere," the gray
commander wrote his detached lieutenant in mid-March, "we must en-
deavor, by judicious dispositions, to be enabled to make our troops avail-
able in any quarter where they may be needed [and] after the emer-
gency passes in one place to transfer them to any other point that may
be threatened."
With fewer First Corps troops on hand than had departed, he was
down to 58,800 effectives and 170 guns, to be used in opposing a good
deal better than twice as many of both. He was almost precisely aware
of his opponent's numerical preponderance, not only because of in-
formation he received from spies beyond the northern lines, but also be-
cause he read the northern papers, one of which was quite specific on
the point. Quoting Hooker's medical director, this journal showed
10,777 men on the current sick list, and then went on to state that the
sick- well ratio was 67.64 per 1000. By computation Lee arrived at a figure
close to 160,000. (Awesome though this total was, it was even a bit
low. In late March the Federal commander, lumping teamsters, cooks,
and other extra-duty personnel with all the rest, reported an "aggregate
present" of 163,005.) Against such odds, and with the knowledge that
Hooker would choose the time and place of attack, Lee's only hope
Death of a Soldier
[241]
for salvation was superior generalship — his own and that of his chief
subordinates — coupled with the valor of his soldiers and the increased
efficiency of his army. To help achieve this last, he reorganized the artil-
lery into battalions of four four-gun batteries each, four of which bat-
talions were attached to each of the two corps, with two more in gen-
eral reserve. His hope was that this arrangement, besides strengthening
the close-up support of the infantry on the defensive, would provide
the "long arm" with a flexibility that would permit a more rapid massing
of fire from several quarters of the field at once, either for counter-
battery work or for softening an enemy position as a prelude to attack.
Whether such measures would produce the desired effect remained to
be seen in combat, but another innovation required no testing, its effec-
tiveness being apparent even to a casual eye. This was a legacy left by
Longstreet on his departure beyond the James: left, indeed, not only to
the Army of Northern Virginia, but also to military science, since in
time it would be recognized as perhaps the Confederacy's main contri-
bution to the art of war, which was never the same thereafter.
In mid- January, while Lee was away on his brief trip to Rich-
mond, Old Peter had been left in command on the Rappahannock by
virtue of his seniority. His corps, still intact at the time, occupied the
northern half of the position, from Hamilton's Crossing to Banks Ford,
five miles above Fredericksburg, while Jackson's occupied the rest, from
Massaponax Creek down to Port Royal, twenty miles below the town.
Lee had no sooner left than Longstreet invited Stonewall to inspect the
First Corps defenses, and what the grim Virginian saw when he arrived
[ 242 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
was in the nature of a revelation. Located so as to dominate the roads
and open ground, the fieldworks had been designed for use by a skeleton
force which could hold them against a surprise attack until supports
came up from the reserve. There was nothing new about that; Lee had
conceived and used intrenchments for the same purpose on the Penin-
sula, nearly a year ago. The innovation here involved was the traversed
trench. Formerly such works had been little more than long, open
ditches, with the spoil thrown forward to serve as a parapet, which gave
excellent protection from low-trajectory fire from dead ahead but were
vulnerable to flank attack and the lateral effect of bursting shells. To off-
set these two disadvantages — particularly the latter, intensified by the
long-range rifled cannon of the Federals, firing from positions well be-
yond the reach of most Confederate batteries — Longstreet's engineers
had broken the long ditches into quite short, squad-sized rifle trenches,
staggered in depth, disposed for mutual support, and connected by trav-
erses which could be utilized against flank attacks and afforded solid pro-
tection from all but direct artillery hits. Jackson took a careful look,
then returned to his own lines, where the dirt began at once to fly anew.
From such crude beginnings, fathered by the necessity for defending a
fixed position against a greatly superior foe, grew the highly intricate
field fortifications of the future. Presently the whole Rappahannock
line, from Banks Ford to Port Royal, was thus protected throughout
its undulant, winding, 25-mile length, and when Old Peter left next
month with more than half of his men, so well had he and they designed
and dug, Lee did not find it necessary to reinforce the two-division rem-
nant by shifting troops from Jackson. "The world has never seen such a
fortified position," a young Second Corps artillerist declared some weeks
later. "The famous lines at Torres Vedras could not compare with them.
. . . They follow the contour of the ground and hug the bases of the hills
as they wind to and from the river, thus giving natural flanking ar-
rangements, and from the tops of the hills frown the redoubts for sunken
batteries and barbette batteries ad libitum, far exceeding the number of
our guns; while occasionally, where the trenches take straight across the
fields, a redoubt stands out defiantly in the open plain to receive our
howitzers." Hooker might, as Lee said, "make every effort to crush [the
defenders] between now and June," but he was going to find it a much
harder job, from here on out, if he tried anything like the approach his
predecessor had adopted in December.
On the face of it, that seemed unlikely; Hooker did not resemble
Burnside in manner any more than he did in looks. Clearly, if he con-
tinued to develop along the lines he had followed so far, Lee was going
to have a far thornier problem on his hands, even aside from the length-
ened numerical odds, than any he had overcome in frustrating the two
all-out offensives that had succeeded his repulse of McClellan, within
sight and sound of Richmond, nine months back. The new chieftain's re-
Death of a Soldier [ 243 ]
organization of his mounted force was a case in point; "Hooker made
the Federal cavalry," an admiring trooper later declared. Formerly par-
celed out, regiment by regiment, to infantry commanders whose han-
dling of them had been at best inept, whether in or out of combat, the
three divisions — 11,500 strong, with about 13,000 horses — were
grouped into a single corps under Brigadier General George Stoneman,
a forty-year-old West Pointer, all of whose previous service had been
with the mounted arm, before and during the present war, except for a
brief term as an infantry corps commander, in which capacity he had
won a brevet for gallantry at Fredericksburg. His current rank was one
grade below that of the other seven heads of corps; Hooker was with-
holding promotion until Stoneman proved that he could weld his in-
herited conglomeration of horsemen into an effective striking force.
That was his basic task, and he seemed well on the way toward pushing
it to fulfillment, helped considerably by the fact that, after nearly two
years in the saddle, the early blue-jacket volunteers — formerly sneered
at by their fox-hunt-trained opponents as "white-faced clerks and
counter jumpers" who scarcely knew the on side from the off — were
becoming seasoned troopers, no longer mounted on crowbait nags
fobbed off on the government by unprincipled contractors, but on
strong-limbed, sound-winded, well-fed animals who, like their riders,
had learned the evolutions of the line and had mastered the art of sur-
vival in all weathers.
This improvement came moreover at a time of crisis for the gray
cavalry on the opposite bank of the Rappahannock. Not only was there
a critical shortage of horses in the Army of Northern Virginia; there
was also the likelihood that those on hand, survivors for the most part
of a year of hard campaigning, would die for lack of forage. This sec-
ond danger increased the threat implicit in the first. So clean had the re-
gion been swept of fodder that such few remounts as could be found
outside the immediate theater of war could not be brought northward.
For example, four hundred artillery horses procured that winter in
Georgia had to be kept in North Carolina because they could not be
foraged with the army, all but a dozen of whose batteries had already
been withdrawn from the lines in order to save the animals from starva-
tion. A man could subsist, at least barely, on a couple of pounds of food
a day, whereas a horse required about ten times that amount, and this
was a great deal more than the rickety single-track railroad from
Richmond could bring forward, even if that much grain had been avail-
able there. The result was that the cavalry's activity was severely lim-
ited. Brigadier General Wade Hampton's brigade, for instance — the
first of Stuart's three, which contained in all about 5000 men — had
staged three highly successful small-scale raids, deep in the Federal rear
at Dumfries and Occoquan, immediately before and after the Battle of
Fredericksburg, returning with some 300 captives and their mounts,
[244] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
mostly unwary vedettes picked up in the course of the gray column's
advance by starlight, together with a sizeable train of mule-drawn
wagons loaded with captured stores, including 300 pairs of badly needed
boots — a real windfall. But the end result of these three coups was that
Hampton's underfed horses were so utterly broken down by their exer-
tions that the whole brigade had to be sent south to recover, thus weak-
ening Lee still further at a time when he expected Hooker to make up
his mind to come booming over the river any day.
Stuart chafed under the restriction thus imposed. His one exploit
this winter was an 1800-trooper raid on Fairfax Courthouse, fifteen
miles from the Federal capital, beginning the day after Christmas and
ending New Year's Day; but all it earned him — in contrast to the
enormously successful forays by Forrest and Morgan, launched simul-
taneously in the West — was 200 mounted prisoners, 20 wagons, and
the contents of a dozen sutler stalls; which scarcely made up for the
wear and tear of the long ride. Though as usual he made the most of the
adventure in his report, it was followed by two months spent in winter
quarters, where he was obliged to give less attention to the fast-
developing enemy cavalry than to the problem of finding forage for his
hungry horses. In such surroundings, though he sought diversion for
himself and his men in regimental balls and serenades, the plumed hat,
red-lined cape, and golden spurs lost a measure of their glitter, at least in
certain eyes. "Stuart carries around with him a banjo player and a spe-
cial correspondent," one high-ranking fellow officer remarked. "This
claptrap is noticed and lauded as a peculiarity of genius, when in fact it
is nothing else but the act of a buffoon to attract attention." Down to
two brigades after Hampton's departure — one under W. H. F. Lee,
called "Rooney," and the other under Fitzhugh Lee, respectively the
commanding general's son and nephew — Jeb was obliged to take his
pleasure at second hand, from the occasional exploits of subordinates
and even ex-subordinates. Among the latter was Captain John S. Mosby,
a former cavalry scout who had been given permission in January to
recruit a body of partisans for operations in the Loudoun Valley, part of
a region to be known in time as "Mosby's Confederacy," so successful
were he and his Rangers in bedeviling and defeating the bluecoats sent
there to capture or destroy him. Twenty-eight years old and weighing
barely 1 2 5 pounds, the slim, gray-eyed Virginian first attracted wide at-
tention by his capture, at Fairfax on a night in early March, of Brigadier
General E. H. Stoughton, a Vermont-born West Pointer, together with
two other officers, 30 men, and 58 horses. Mosby, who at present had
fewer men than that in his whole command, entered the general's head-
quarters, stole upstairs in the darkness, and found the general himself
asleep in bed. Turning down the covers, he lifted the tail of the sleeper's
nightshirt and gave him a spank on the behind.
"General," he said, "did you ever hear of Mosby?"
Death of a Soldier [ 245 ]
"Yes," Stoughton replied, flustered and half awake; "have you
caught him?"
"He has caught you," Mosby said, by way of self-introduction,
and got his captive up and dressed and took him back through the lines,
along with virtually all of his headquarters guard, for delivery to Fitz-
hugh Lee the following morning at Culpeper.
Fitz Lee, a year younger than the clean-shaven Mosby, though he
disguised the fact behind an enormous shovel beard that outdid even
Longstreet's in length and thickness, could appreciate a joke as well as the
next man, and in this case he could appreciate it perhaps a good deal
better, since he and the captive Vermonter had been schoolmates at the
Point. Besides, he was in an excellent frame of mind just now, having
returned the week before from a similar though less spectacular exploit
involving still another fellow cadet of his and Stoughton's: New York-
born Brigadier General W. W. Averell, who commanded the second
of Stoneman's three divisions. Young Lee was sent by his uncle to in-
vestigate a rumor that Hooker was about to repeat McClellan's strat-
egy by transferring his army to the Peninsula. Crossing the Rappahan-
nock well upstream at Kelly's Ford on February 24, Lee's 400-man
detachment pushed on to the Warrenton Post Road, then down it, pene-
trating the blue cavalry screen to the vicinity of Hartwood Church,
eight miles short of Falmouth. Here the graybacks encountered their
first serious opposition in the form of the 3d Pennsylvania Cavalry,
Averell's old regiment before his promotion to divisional command. Lee
promptly charged and routed the Keystone troopers, capturing 150 of
them at a cost to himself of 14 killed and wounded. Then, having se-
cured the information he had come for — Hooker, whose headquarters
were a scant half-dozen miles away by now, obviously was planning
no such move as had been rumored — Lee successfully withdrew with-
out further incident, leaving behind him a note for his former school-
mate, whose entire division had been turned out, along with two others
of infantry, in a vain attempt to intercept the raiders and avenge the de-
feat of one of its best regiments. The note was brief and characteristic. "I
wish you would put up your sword, leave my state, and go home," Fitz
told his old friend, adding in reference to the speed with which the blue-
coats had retreated when attacked: "You ride a good horse, I ride a bet-
ter. Yours can beat mine running." The close was in the nature of a chal-
lenge. "If you won't go home, return my visit and bring me a sack of
coffee."
Averell returned the visit within three weeks, and he took care to
bring along a sack of coffee in his saddlebags. What was more, he repaid
the call in force, splashing through the shallows of Kelly's Ford on the
morning of March 17 with 3000 troopers. Lee had fewer than 1000 at
the time, but his pickets put up such a scrap at the crossing that Averell,
though he was pleased to have captured about two dozen of them in the
[246]
THE CIVIL WAR
1863
skirmish, persuaded himself that it would be wise to leave a third of his
force there to protect his rear, thereby of his own accord reducing the
odds to only a little better than two to one. Also, being aware of his old
schoolmate's impulsive nature, he halted about midmorning, less than a
mile beyond the river, dismounted his men, and took up a strong defen-
sive position behind a stone wall crossing a pasture on the farm of a fam-
ily named Brooks. Sure enough, at noon Lee came riding hard from
Culpeper and attacked without delay, his lead regiment charging
dragoon-style, four abreast. The result, as the defenders poured a hot fire
from behind their ready-made breastworks, was a quick and bloody re-
pulse. Averell cautiously followed it up, but was struck again, one mile
north, with like results. While the blue riders held their ground, the Con-
federates crossed Carter's Run and reassembled; whereupon the two
commands settled down to long-range firing across the creek, relieving
the monotony from time to time with limited charges and counter-
charges which did nothing to
alter the tactical stalemate. This
continued until about 5.30,
when Averell, having learned
from captured rebels that Stuart
and his crack artillerist Pelham
were on the field, decided that
the time had come for him to
recross the Rappahannock. "My
horses were very much ex-
hausted. We had been successful
so far. I deemed it proper to
withdraw." So he stated later in
his report. However, before ter-
minating the requested "visit" he took care to observe the amenities by
leaving the sack of coffee Lee had asked for, together with a note: "Dear
Fitz. Here's your coffee. Here's your visit. How do you like it? Averell."
The truth was, Fitz did not much like it. Though he could, and
did, claim victory on grounds that he had remained in control of the field
after the enemy withdrew, this was not very satisfactory when he con-
sidered that the Federals could make the same claim with regard to
every similar Confederate penetration, including his own recent raid
on Hartwood Church and Stuart's dazzling "rides" the year before.
Then too, there was the matter of casualties. Suffering 133, Lee had in-
flicted only 78, or not much over half as many. If this was a victory, it
was certainly a strange one. But there was more that was alarming about
this St Patrick's Day action: much more, at least from the southern point
of view. For the first time on a fair field of fight — the two-to-one odds
were not unusual; moreover, they had been the source of considerable
underdog glory in the past — Confederate cavalry had fallen back re-
Death of a Soldier [ 247 ]
peatedly under pressure from Federal cavalry. Nothing could have dem-
onstrated better the vast improvement of this arm of the Union war ma-
chine, especially when it was admitted that only Averell's lack of the
true aggressive instinct, which twice had left the rebel horsemen un-
molested while they reformed their broken ranks, had kept the blue
troopers from converting both repulses into routs. Unquestionably, this
proof that the Federal cavalry had come of age, so to speak, meant fu-
ture trouble for the men who previously had ridden around and through
and over their awkward opponents almost at will. . . . Nor was that all
either. This light-hearted exchange of calling cards, accompanied in one
case by the gift of a pound of coffee, had its more immediate somber
consequences, too. After all, a man who died on this small field was
every bit as dead as a man who died in the thunderous pageantry of
Fredericksburg, and his survivors were apt to be quite as inconsolable in
their sorrow. They might possibly be even more inconsolable, since their
grief did not take into account the battle or skirmish itself, but rather the
identity of the man who fell. What made Kelly's Ford particular in this
respect was that it produced one casualty for whom the whole South
mourned.
One of Averell's reasons for withdrawing had been the report
that Stuart was on the field. It was true, so far as it went; Jeb was
there, but he had brought no reinforcements with him, as Averell sup-
posed; he had come to Culpeper on court-martial business, and thus hap-
pened to be on hand when the news arrived that bluecoats were over the
river. Similarly, the day before, John Pelham had left cavalry head-
quarters to see a girl in Orange, so that he too turned up in time to join
Fitz Lee on the ride toward Kelly's Ford; "tall, slender, beautifully pro-
portioned," a friend called the twenty-three-year-old Alabamian, and
"as grand a flirt as ever lived." With his own guns back near Fredericks-
burg — including the brass Napoleon with which he had held up the ad-
vance of a whole Federal division for the better part of an hour — he
was here supposedly as a spectator, but anyone who knew him also knew
that he would never be content with anything less than a ringside seat,
and would scarcely be satisfied even with that, once the action had been
joined. And so it was. When the first charge was launched against the
stone wall, the young major smiled, drew the sword which he happened
to be wearing because he had gone courting the night before, and waved
it gaily as he rode hard to overtake the van. "Forward! Forward!" he
cried. Just then, abrupt as a clap of blue-sky thunder, a shell burst with a
flash and a roar directly overhead. Pelham fell. He lay on his back, full
length and motionless, his blue eyes open and the smile still on his hand-
some face, which was unmarked. Turning him over, however, his com-
panions found a small, deep gash at the base of his skull, just above the
hair line, where a fragment of the shell had struck and entered. When
Stuart, who had ridden to another quarter of the field, heard that his
[248] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
young chief of artillery was dead he bowed his head on his horse's neck
and wept. "Our loss is irreparable," he said.
Others thought so, too: three girls in nearby towns, for instance,
who put on mourning. Word spread quickly throughout the South, and
men and women in far-off places, who had known him only by reputa-
tion, received with a sense of personal bereavement the news that "the
gallant Pelham" had fallen. Robert Lee, who had attached the adjective
to the young gunner's name in his report on their last great battle, made
an unusual suggestion to the President. "I mourn the loss of Major Pel-
ham," he wrote. "I had hoped that a long career of usefulness and honor
was still before him. He has been stricken down in the midst of both,
and before he could receive the promotion he had richly won. I hope
there will be no impropriety in presenting his name to the Senate, that
his comrades may see that his services have been appreciated, and may
be incited to emulate them." Davis promptly forwarded the letter, with
the result that Pelham was promoted even as he lay in state in the Vir-
ginia capitol. For once, the Senate had acted quickly, and the dead artil-
lerist, who just under two years ago had left West Point on the eve of
graduation in order to go with his native state, went home to Alabama
as Lieutenant Colonel Pelham.
At this time of grief, coupled with uncertainty as to the enemy's
intentions, Lee fell ill for the first time in the war. A throat infection had
settled in his chest, giving him pains that interfered with his sleep and
made him testy during his waking hours. By the end of March his con-
dition was such that his medical director insisted that he leave his tent
and take up quarters in a house at Yerby's, on the railroad five miles
south of Fredericksburg. He did so, much against his wishes, and com-
plained in a home letter that the doctors were "tapping me all over like
an old steam boiler before condemning it." After the manner of most
men unfamiliar with sickness, he was irritable and inclined to be impa-
tient with those around him at such times (which in turn provoked his
staff into giving him the irreverent nickname "the Tycoon") but he
never really lost the iron self-control that was the basis of the character
he presented to the world. Once, for example, when he was short with
his adjutant over some administrative detail, that officer drew himself up
with dignity and silently defied his chief; whereupon Lee at once got hold
of himself and said calmly, "Major Taylor, when I lose my temper
don't let it make you angry." Nor did his illness detract in any way from
the qualities which, at the time of his appointment to command, had
led an acquaintance to declare: "His name might be Audacity. He will
take more desperate chances, and take them quicker, than any other gen-
eral in this country, North and South." Confirmation of these words had
come in the smoke and flame of the Seven Days, in the fifty-mile march
around Pope with half of an outnumbered army, and in the bloody de-
fense of the Sharpsburg ridge with his back to a deep river. Yet nothing
Death of a Soldier [ 249 ]
gave them more emphasis than his reaction now to the early- April news
that Burnside's old corps, after lingering all this time at Newport
News, was proceeding west to join its old commander, who had been
assigned to head the Department of the Ohio. This signified trouble for
Johnston and Bragg in Tennessee, since it probably meant that these
troops would reinforce Rosecrans. At Charleston, moreover, Beaure-
gard even now was under what might well be an irresistible attack by
an ironclad fleet, with thousands of bluecoats waiting aboard transports
for the signal to steam into the blasted harbor and occupy the city. Lee's
reaction to this combination of pressures, sick though he was, and faced
with odds which he knew were worse than two to one here on the Rap-
pahannock, was to suggest that, if this bolstering of the Union effort
down the coast and in the West indicated a lessening of the Union effort
in the East, the Army of Northern Virginia should swing over to the
offensive. "Should Hooker's army assume the defensive," he wrote the
Secretary of War on April 9, "the readiest method of relieving the pres-
sure on General Johnston and General Beauregard would be for this
army to cross into Maryland." The wretched condition of the roads,
plus the cramping shortage of provisions and transportation, made such
a move impossible at present, he added; "But this is what I would recom-
mend, if practicable."
Such audacity, though ingrained and very much a part of the na-
ture of the man, was also based on the combat-tested valor of the sol-
diers he commanded. He knew there was nothing he could ask of them
that they would not try to give him, and he believed that with such a
spirit they could not fail; or if they failed, it would not be their fault.
"There never were such men in an army before," he said this spring.
"They will go anywhere and do anything if properly led." And if his
admiration for them was practically boundless, so too was his concern.
"His theory, expressed upon many occasions," a staff officer later wrote,
"was that the private soldiers — men who fought without the stimulus
of rank, emolument, or individual renown — were the most meritori-
ous class of the army, and that they deserved and should receive the ut-
most respect and consideration." Not one of them ever appealed to him
without being given a sympathetic hearing, sometimes in the very heat
of battle, and he turned down a plan for the formation of a battalion of
honor because he did not believe there would be room in its ranks for all
who deserved a place there. Quite literally, nothing was too good for
them in the way of reward, according to Lee, and this applied without
reservation. To him, they all were heroes. One day he saw a man in
uniform standing near the open flap of his tent. "Come in, Captain, and
take a seat," he said. When the man replied, "I'm no captain, General;
I'm nothing but a private," Lee told him: "Come in, sir. Come in and take
a seat. You ought to be a captain."
[250] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
Lincoln apparently felt much the same way about the enlisted
men in blue. One correspondent observed that at the final Grand Review,
staged on the last full day of his Falmouth visit, "the President merely
touched his hat in return salute to the officers, but uncovered to the men
in the ranks." Seated upon a short, thick-set horse with a docked tail, the
tall civilian in the stovepipe hat and rusty tailcoat presented quite a con-
trast to the army commander, who wore a dress uniform and rode his
usual milk-white charger. A Maine soldier noticed Hooker's "evident
satisfaction" as the long blue files swung past in neat array, and spoke of
"the conscious power shown on his handsome but rather too rosy face,"
whereas another from Wisconsin remarked that "Mr Lincoln sat his cob
perfectly straight, and dressed as he was in dark clothes, it appeared as if
he was an exclamation point astride of the small letter 7;;." He seemed
oddly preoccupied with matters far removed from the present martial
business of watching the troops pass in review. This was shown to be
the case when he turned without preamble to Major General Darius N.
Couch, the senior corps commander, and asked: "What do you suppose
will become of all these men when the war is over?" Couch was some-
what taken aback; his mind had not been working along those lines; but
he said later, "It struck me as very pleasant that somebody had an idea
that the war would sometime end."
Four days of intimate acquaintance with the Army of the Po-
tomac had indicated to Lincoln, despite the blusterous symptoms of over-
confidence on the part of the man beside him on the big white horse —
despite, too, the rumored repulse of the ironclads at Charleston, the loss
of the Union foothold on Texas, the upsurge of guerillas in Missouri, the
apparent stalemate in Middle Tennessee, and Grant's long sequence
of failures in front of Vicksburg — that the end of the war might in-
deed be within reach, once Hooker decided the time had come for a
jump-orT. Morale had never been higher, the Chief Excutive found by
talking with the troops in their renovated camps and hospitals. More-
over, the reorganizational shake-up seemed to have brought the best
men to the top. Sumner and Franklin were gone for good, along with
the clumsy Grand Division arrangement which had accomplished little
more than the addition of another link to the overlong chain of com-
mand, and of the seven major generals now at the head of the seven in-
fantry corps, less than half — Couch, Reynolds, and Henry W. Slocum
had served in the same capacity during the recent Fredericksburg fiasco,
while the remaining four were graduates of the hard-knocks school of
experience and therefore could be presumed to have achieved their cur-
rent eminence on merit. Daniel E. Sickles, the only nonregular of the
lot, had taken over from Stoneman after that officer's transfer to the
cavalry; Meade had succeeded Dan Butterfield, who had moved up to
the post of army chief of staff; John Sedgwick had inherited the com-
mand of W. F. Smith, now in charge of Burnside's old corps on its way
Death of a Soldier [ 251 ]
out to Ohio; Oliver O. Howard, who had lost an arm last year on the
Peninsula, had replaced Sigel when that general, already miffed be-
cause Hooker had been promoted over his head, resigned in protest be-
cause his corps, being next to the smallest of the seven, was incom-
mensurate with his rank. Lincoln had known most of these men before,
but in the course of the past four days he had come to know them better,
with the result that he felt confident, more confident at any rate than he
had felt before, as to the probable outcome of a clash between the armies
now facing each other across the Rappahannock. In fact his principal
admonition, in a memorandum which he prepared in the course of his
visit — perhaps on this same April 9 of the final Grand Review, while
Lee was recommending to his government that the Army of Northern
Virginia swing over to the offensive in order to break up the menacing
Federal combinations — was that "our prime object is the enemy's army
in front of us, and is not . . . Richmond at all, unless it be incidental to
the main object." Having observed from Stafford Heights the strength of
the rebel fortifications, he did not think it would be wise to "take the
disadvantage of attacking [Lee] in his intrenchments; but we should
continually harass and menace him, so that he shall have no leisure or
safety in sending away detachments. If he weakens himself, then pitch
into him."
One further admonition he had, and he delivered himself of it the
following morning as he sat with Hooker and Couch before departing
for Aquia Landing, where the steamer was waiting to take him and his
party back to Washington. "I want to impress upon you two gentle-
men," he said, "in your next fight, put in all your men." He pronounced
the last five words with emphasis, perhaps recalling that in the Decem-
ber fight a good half of the army had stood idle on the left while the
conflict wore toward its bloody twilight finish on the right, and then he
was off to join his wife and son for the boat ride up the Potomac. Al-
though the trip unquestionably had done him good, providing him with
a rare chance to relax, it was after all no more than an interlude in the
round of administrative cares, a brief recess from the importunities of
men who sought to avail themselves of the power of his office. When a
friend remarked that he was looking rested and in better health as a
result of his visit to the army, Lincoln replied that it had been "a great
relief to get away from Washington and the politicians. But nothing
touches the tired spot," he added.
X 3 X
Longstreet, on his own at last — at least in a manner of speaking — was
finding no such opportunities for glory beyond the James as his fellow
corps commander Jackson had found the year before, on detached serv-
[ 252 ] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
ice out in the Shenandoah Valley. There Stonewall had not only added
a brisk chapter to military history and several exemplary paragraphs to
future tactics manuals, but had also earned for himself, according to
admirers, the one thing his senior rival, according to detractors, wanted
more than anything on or off the earth: a seat among the immortals in
Valhalla. However, this southside venture, being a different kind of
thing, seemed quite unlikely to be productive of any such reward. De-
signed less for the gathering of laurels than for the gathering of the
hams and bacon which for generations had made and would continue
to make the Smithfield region famous, it was aimed at satisfying the
hunger of the stomach, rather than the hunger of the soul. What was
more, throughout his ten weeks of "independent" command, Old Peter
was obliged to serve three masters — Davis, Seddon, and Lee — who sad-
dled him with three separate, simultaneous, and sometimes incompatible
assignments: i) the protection of the national capital, threatened by
combinations of forces superior to his own, 2 ) the gathering of supplies
in an area that had been under Federal domination for nearly a year, and
3) the disposition of his troops so as to be able to hurry them back to
the Rappahannock on short notice. To these, there presently was added a
fourth, the investment of Suffolk, which had more men within its fortifi-
cations than he could bring against them. The wonder, under such condi-
tions as obtained, was not that he failed in part, but that he succeeded to
any degree at all in fulfilling these divergent expectations.
In Richmond itself there had been no talk of failure at the out-
set, only a feeling of vast relief as the battle-hardened divisions of Hood
and Pickett arrived to block the approach of blue forces reported to be
gathering ominously, east and southeast of the city, beyond the rim of
intrenchments mainly occupied by part-time defenders recruited in the
emergency from the host of clerks and other government workers who
had escaped conscription up to now. One of these, an industrious diarist,
influenced perhaps by a far-fetched sense of rivalry — or perhaps by the
fact that in the past six months, since Lee's army had set out northward
after Pope, he had forgot what a combat soldier looked like — thought
the First Corps veterans "pale and haggard" when he saw them on Feb-
ruary 18, slogging through snow deposited calf-deep in the streets by a
heavy storm the night before. Four days later, however, Seddon wrote
Lee that their "appearance, spirit, and cheerfulness afforded great satis-
faction," not only to the authorities but also to the fretful populace.
"General Longstreet is here," the Secretary added, "and under his able
guidance of such troops no one doubts as to the entire security of the
capital." On February 25 he appointed the burly Georgian commander
of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, which was created by
combining the three departments of Richmond, Southern Virginia, and
North Carolina, respectively under Major Generals Arnold Elzey, Sam-
uel G. French, and D. H. Hill, together with the independent Cape Fear
Death of a Soldier [ 253 ]
River District under Brigadier General W. H. C. Whiting, who was
charged with protecting Wilmington from attack by land or water.
Longstreet's total number of men present for duty, including those in
the two divisions he brought with him, plus Ransom's demi-division for-
warded earlier, was 44,193 of all arms, mostly scattered about the two
states in ill-equipped and poorly administered garrisons of defense. Al-
ready outnumbered by the Federals on hand — whose current strength
of 50,995 effectives he considerably overestimated — he was alarmed
by reports, received on the day he assumed command, that transports
were arriving daily in Hampton Roads, crowded to the gunwales with
reinforcements for the intended all-out drive on Richmond. So far, they
had unloaded an estimated "40,000 or 50,000" troops at Newport News,
he wired Lee, and there were rumors that Joe Hooker himself had been
seen at Fort Monroe, presaging the early arrival of the balance of the
Army of the Potomac.
In such alarming circumstances, and schooled as he had been in
strategy under Lee, Old Peter reasoned that the time had come for him
to attack, if only by way of creating a diversion. As he put it, "We are
much more likely to succeed by operating ourselves than by lying still
to await the enemy's time for thorough preparations before he moves
upon us." However, it was in the attempted application of this com-
mendable principle that his troubles really began; for it was then that he
came face to face with the fact that the exercise of independent com-
mand, especially in the armies of the Confederacy, involved a good deal
more than a knowledge of tactics and logistics. Like him, his three rank-
ing subordinates were West Pointers in their early or middle forties,
and like him, too, they had their share of temperamental peculiarities —
as he discovered when he issued instructions for a joint attack on
New Bern. Held by the Federals for nearly a year now, the town had
been the base for their mid-December advance against the Wilmington &
Weldon Railroad, sixty miles away at Goldsboro, and it was Longstreet's
belief that an attack on both banks of the Neuse River, farther down,
would pinch off the blue garrison and expose it to capture or destruc-
tion. His plan was for Hill to move against the place with his whole com-
mand, reinforced by one of Whiting's two brigades, which would give
him about 14,000 men in all. Hill was altogether willing, having re-
cently excoriated the Yankee invaders by calling upon his infantry to
"cut down to 6 feet by 2 the dimensions of the farms which these
plunderers propose to appropriate." But Whiting was not, even though
the brigade asked for was Ransom's, detached from the First Corps and
forwarded to him only the month before. In response to Longstreet's
call for "half your force and as many more as can be spared from the
Wilmington garrison," along with one of his three long-range Whit-
worth guns, Whiting — a brilliant thirty-nine-year-old Mississippi an
who, three years after Old Peter had finished near the bottom of the
[254]
THE CIVIL WAR
1 863
West Point class of '42, had not only graduated at the top of his class,
but had done so with the highest marks any cadet had ever made —
promptly wrote: "I perceive you are not acquainted with this vicinity.
. . . So far from considering myself able to spare troops from here, I
have applied for and earnestly urged that another brigade be sent here
immediately. The works here are by no means completed and I need
the services of every man I can raise."
The result was that Hill
moved against New Bern with-
out the help of Whiting's men
or the loan of the precious long-
range gun, and though he con-
verted what was to have been an
attack into a demonstration — it
was March 14, the anniversary
of the fall of the town to the
Federals as a follow-up of their
capture of Roanoke Island —
even that was repulsed decisively
when the defenders towed gun-
boats up the river from Pamlico
Sound and opened a scorching
fire against the Confederates on
both banks, inflicting 30-odd cas-
ualties at a cost of only 6. Back
in Goldsboro two days later, Hill
was furious. "The spirit mani-
fested by Whiting has spoiled
everything," he protested in his report. As he saw it, the proper cor-
rection for this was for the government to keep its word that he
would be given command of all the troops in the state, including
those at Wilmington, in which case he would be able to bend the frac-
tious Whiting to his will. "I have received nothing but contemptuous
treatment from Richmond from the very beginning of the war," he
complained hotly, "but I hope they will not carry matters so far as to
perpetuate a swindle." Longstreet, receiving his caustic friend's report,
sought to protect him from the wrath of their superiors. "I presume
that this was not intended as an official communication," he replied, "and
have not forwarded it. I hope that you will send up another account of
your trip." Hill neither insisted that the document stand nor offered to
withdraw it, but he declined to submit a new or expurgated account of
what Old Peter referred to as his "trip."
For all his obstreperous ways of protesting the injustice he saw
everywhere around him, Hill was only one among the many when it
came to presenting his chief with problems. Arnold Elzey, in charge of
o.:: Milts 50
Death of a Soldier [ 255 ]
the Richmond defenses north of the James, had only recently returned
to duty after a long and painful convalescence from the face wound he
had suffered at Gaines Mill. A Marylander, he originally had had the last
name Jones, but had dropped it in favor of his mother's more distinctive
maiden name. Erratic and moody, perhaps because of his disfigurement
and the internal damage to his mouth which made his words scarcely
intelligible, he was said to be drinking heavily — a particular yet not
uncommon type among the casualties of war, injured as much in pride
as in body. At any rate, neither he nor his command could be counted
on for anything more than the desperate last-ditch resistance that was
his and their assignment. Moreover, Longstreet had no high opinion of
the abilities of Sam French, who was charged with the defense of Peters-
burg, that vital nexus of rail supply lines connecting Virginia and the
deeper South. A New-Jersey-born adoptive Mississippian and a veteran
of the Mexican War, French had attained high rank without distinction
in the field of the present conflict, and Old Peter had the usual combat
officer's prejudice in this and other such cases he encountered when he
crossed the James. Because of Lee's policy of quietly getting rid of men
he found unsatisfactory, not by cashiering them but by transferring them
to far or adjoining theaters where he considered their shortcomings
would cost their country less, Longstreet might have thought he was
back with the old Army of the Potomac, as it had been called before
the advent of Lee and its transfiguration into the Army of Northern Vir-
ginia, so familiar were the faces of many of the officers he found serving
under him when he took over his new department. All too many of
those faces reflected failure, and all too many others identified men who
were inexperienced in combat.
Not that there appeared to be any considerable need for such ex-
perience just now. Foraging operations were in full swing, with com-
missary details scouring the countryside and sending back long trains of
wagons heavily loaded with hams and bacon, side meat, salted fish, and
flour and cornmeal, all of which were plenteous in the region. In-
creasingly, as the Federals failed to press their rumored drive on Rich-
mond, the removal of such badly needed stores was becoming the prime
concern of the department commander and his troops.
On March 17 their work was interrupted by a dispatch from Lee.
Bluecoats were over the Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford; Longstreet was
to hurry north with Hood and Pickett to help drive them back. Before
he could obey, however, the order was countermanded. The threat had
been no more than a cavalry raid; the enemy troopers had retired. Old
Peter returned to his foraging duties with new zeal. Now that the
nearer counties had been picked clean, he wanted to move eastward into
those beyond the Blackwater and Chowan Rivers, out of reach for the
past year because of the Union occupation. He figured that if the Yan-
kees could be driven back within their works and held there for a rea-
[256] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
sonable length of time, his commissary agents — unhampered by the
enemy and aided by the citizens of those regions, who had remained in-
tensely loyal to the Confederacy through long months when they might
have thought themselves forsaken — would be able to effect a quick re-
moval of the stores. However, this was at best a risky business for him
to undertake. He would not only have to keep his two most effective
divisions ready to disengage on short notice, in order to be able to speed
them north on call from Lee; he would also have to detail a considerable
portion of his force for commissary duties behind the lines if he was to
accomplish the main purpose underlying his reason for advancing in
the first place. In short, with these two disadvantages added to the fact
that he was outnumbered before he even began, he would be reversing
the required two-to-one numerical ratio between the two parties en-
gaged in siege operations. But he decided to give the thing a try in any
event, for the sake of all those thousands of slabs of bacon and barrels
of herring awaiting removal from areas previously inaccessible to the
soldiers who were fighting here and elsewhere for their eventual deliver-
ance from the blue forces now in occupation.
He made his plans accordingly. Hood and Pickett would join
French for a movement against Suffolk, which would serve the double
purpose of bringing the fertile Blackwater-Chowan watersheds within
the grasp of his commissary agents and of blocking the path of a Federal
drive on Petersburg from the lower reaches of the James. Nor was that
all. Hill — reinforced at last by Ransom's brigade, pried loose from
Whiting over that general's violent protest that he was being stripped
of two thirds of his infantry on the eve of an all-out assault on Wilming-
ton by the ironclad fleet Du Pont was assembling at Port Royal —
would move simultaneously against Washington, North Carolina, the
Tar River gateway to a region which was lush with agricultural produce
and gave access to the fisheries of upper Pamlico Sound. This lower
movement under Hill, while equally rich in foraging possibilities, was
more in the nature of a diversion, favoring the main effort against Suf-
folk, which would be under Longstreet's personal direction. It was Old
Peter's hope that the Unionists, being threatened in two places at once,
would not only be prevented from strengthening either at the expense of
the other, but would also be thrown off balance by the expectation of
additional strikes, all down the long perimeter of their coastal holdings.
Though he made it clear at the outset, to his superiors as well as to his
subordinates, that both advances were intended to be no more than dem-
onstrations, staged primarily to drive the bluecoats within their works
so that his foraging details would be free to scour the area unmolested,
he did not overlook the possibility of taking advantage of any opening
the enemy might afford. Food for Lee's soldiers was his main concern,
but he intended to draw blood, too — despite the numerical odds —
whenever and wherever the tactical risk appeared slight enough to jus-
Death of a Soldier [ 257 ]
tify grasping the nettle. "The principal object of the expedition was to
draw out supplies for our army," he reminded the War Department
after the movement against Suffolk was under way. "I shall confine my-
self to this unless I find a fair opportunity for something more."
Hill took off first, however, advancing so rapidly from Golds-
boro that on March 30 he had Washington invested before the Federal
department commander, Major General John G. Foster, had a chance
to reinforce its 1200-man garrison. With ten times that many troops on
hand, the Confederates would have little trouble keeping the defenders
penned up, but Hill did not believe their capture would be worth the
casualties he would suffer in an assault. Consequently, while his foragers
were busily rounding up hogs and cattle, he continued to hover about
the place, making threatening gestures from time to time in the face of
highly accurate fire from gunboats anchored off the town. His chief
worry was that Foster — one of Burnside's three aggressive brigadiers
in last year's smashing attack on Roanoke Island — would order an ad-
vance against his rear by the Union force at New Bern, only thirty miles
away. As the siege progressed through the first week in April he vibrated
with alternate emotions of jubilation and despair, much to the confusion
of Longstreet, who scarcely knew what to make of his lieutenant's fluc-
tuant dispatches. "Up to the 2d instant," he replied from Petersburg on
April 7, apparently in something of a daze, "you gave me no reason to
hope that you could accomplish anything. . . . Then came your letter of
the 2d, which was full of encouragement and hope. . . . After your letter
of the 2d came one of the 4th, which I believe was more desponding
than your previous letters. . . . Your letter of the 5th revives much hope
again." Old Peter was understandably confused, but in point of fact
Hill was doing much better than he knew or would admit. Not onlv
were large quantities of supplies moving swiftly back to Goldsboro for
forwarding to Richmond and the Rappahannock line, but Foster was
reacting exactly as the Confederates had hoped he would do to their pre-
tense of great strength and earnestness. Drawing in his horns in expecta-
tion of being struck next at almost any point in his department, he left
Hill's commissary agents a clear field for exploitation. "I am confident,"
he warned Halleck on Easter Sunday, "that heavy operations will be
necessary in this state, and that the most desperate efforts are and will
continue to be made to drive us from the towns now occupied."
At any rate Longstreet's main concern was centered presently on
matters closer at hand than Hill's pendulum swings from gloom to ela-
tion down on the banks of the Tar. On April 9 — the day Lee recom-
mended an advance into Maryland as the best Confederate strategy for
contesting the over-all Union menace, East and West, and also the day
Flooker staged the last of the Grand Reviews in honor of Lincoln's
Falmouth visit — First Corps troops moved out of their camps near
Petersburg and took up the march southeastward in the direction of the
[258] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
lower Blackwater crossings less than twenty miles from Suffolk, which
the Federals had been fortifying ever since they occupied it formally in
September. Two divisions were quartered there now, under Major Gen-
eral John J. Peck and Brigadier General George W. Getty, with a com-
bined total of 21,108 effectives. Hood, Pickett, and French had 20,192
between them; but Peck, estimating the rebel strength at "40,000 to
60,000 men," reacted much as Foster had done, ten days ago, to Hill's
advance on Washington. Calling in all his detachments from the sur-
rounding countryside, he skirmished briefly along the Blackwater to
gain time for a concentration, then fell back on Suffolk, where he but-
toned himself up tightly. While his troops were at work improving the
intrenchments, he notified his superiors at Fort Monroe and Washing-
ton that he was prepared to fight to the last man, despite the enemy's
"great preponderance of artillery as well as other branches." Longstreet
moved up deliberately. On April 1 1 he invested the town, taking the
bluecoats under fire from the opposite bank of the Nansemond River
while extending his right southward all the way to Dismal Swamp. Be-
hind this long, concave front, which he held with a minimum number of
men in order to provide details for his all-important foraging operations,
commissary officers were soon busy purchasing everything in sight that
a man could eat or wear. Long trains of wagons, piled high with goods
and forage, soon were grinding westward amid a din of cracking
whips, ungreased axles, and teamster curses. After unloading at newly
established dumps along the Petersburg & Norfolk Railroad, they re-
turned eastward, rattling empty across the muddy landscape, for new
loads. Day and night, to Longstreet's considerable satisfaction — as well
as to that of the hungry men on the Rappahannock, whose rations im-
proved correspondingly — the shuttle work continued. Supplies ap-
peared inexhaustible in this region scarcely touched by war till now.
Meanwhile, by way of keeping up the bluff, the troops on line
were demonstrating noisily, as if in preparation for an assault on the blue
intrenchments across the way. Although the duty was mostly dull, there
were occasional incidents that provided all the excitement a man could
want, and more. For instance, there was the affair at Fort Huger, an
old Confederate redoubt constructed originally as part of the Suffolk de-
fenses but abandoned by the Federals when they took over. As it turned
out, they showed wisdom by this action. On April 16, French moved
five guns and three companies of infantry into the fort on the far left
of his line, intending to deny enemy gunboats the use of the adjoining
Nansemond River. Three nights later, however, six companies of Con-
necticut infantry crossed the river, a quarter of a mile upstream, and
swooped down in a surprise attack that captured the works, along with
all five of the guns and 130 officers and men. Joined before dawn by the
other four companies of their regiment, they held the place all the fol-
lowing day and returned to their own lines after dark, taking along the
Death of a Soldier [ 259 ]
captured men and guns. Longstreet had scarcely had rime to absorb the
news of this setback when he heard from Hill that the Washington siege
had been abandoned on the same day Fort Huger was occupied by
French. Two w r eeks had sufficed for the removal of most of the stores
from the region; so that when, at the end of that span, the Federals suc-
ceeded in running in two ships to replenish the supplies of the garrison,
Hill decided the time had come for him to withdraw. Back at Goldsboro
before the week was out, he praised his troops for their ''vigilance on
duty and good behavior everywhere." His scorn he reserved for home-
guarders, especially those of lofty rank, whose avoidance of combat
duty he blamed for his lack of the strength required to drive the de-
tested Yankees not only "into their rat holes at New Bern and Washing-
ton," but into Pamlico Sound as well. "And such noble regiments they
have," he sneered at these stay-at-home Tarheel warriors. "Three field
officers, four staff officers, ten captains, thirty lieutenants, and one pri-
vate with a misery in his bowels. . . . When our independence is won, the
most trifling soldier in the ranks will be more respected, as he is now
more respectable, than an army of these skulking exempts."
Longstreet accepted vexation far more philosophically. Even the
overrunning of Fort Huger, though it showed, as he said, "a general
lack of vigilance and prompt attention to duties," did not arouse his ire.
"Many of the officers were of limited experience," he concluded his re-
port of the affair, "and I have no doubt acted as they thought best. I do
not know that any of them deserve censure. This lesson, it is hoped, will
be of service to us all." Others reacted differently as the Suffolk siege
wore on. Hood, for example, had small use for this buttoned-up style of
warfare. "Here we are in front of the enemy again," he wrote Lee to-
ward the end of April. "The Yankees have a very strong position, and
of course they increase the strength of their position daily. I presume we
shall leave here so soon as we gather all the bacon in the country." Boy-
ishly the Kentucky-born Texan added: "When we leave here it is my
desire to return to you. If any troops come to the Rappahannock please
don't forget me." Thirty-one and a bachelor, Hood was bored. But that
could scarcely be said of his fellow division commander Pickett. This
thirty-eight-year-old widower, a handsome if rather doll-faced man
with long chestnut curls which he anointed regularly with perfume, was
in the full flush of a sunset love affair with a southside girl not half his
age. LaSalle Corbell was her name; he styled her "the charming Sally" —
his dead wife had been called Sally, too — and wrote her ardent letters
signed "Your Soldier" despite the fact that he saw her almost nightly,
riding up to her home at Chuckatuck by twilight and back to his lines
before the first red glow of dawn. When Longstreet at last began to
frown on this inattentiveness to duty, not to mention the abuse of horse-
flesh, Pickett tried to persuade the corps adjutant, Major G. Moxley Sor-
rel, to give him permission to take off without Old Peter's knowledge.
[260] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
Sorrel, who did not approve of what he called "such carpet-knight do-
ings in the field," declined to accept the responsibility for what might
happen in Pickett's absence, and referred him back to Longstreet. "But
he is tired of it and will refuse," the ringleted Virginian protested. "And
I must go; I must see her. I swear, Sorrel, I'll be back before anything can
happen in the morning." Sorrel still said no; but recalling the scene years
later he added that "Pickett went all the same. Nothing could hold him
back from that pursuit."
Increasingly, as spring wore on and the end of the campaign
drew near — he himself had set a May 3 closing date by notifying Rich-
mond on April 19 that two more weeks would suffice for draining the
region of its stores — Longstreet grew dissatisfied: not so much with
what he had done, which was after all considerable, as with the thought
of what he had not done. While it was true that he had carried out, prac-
tically to the letter, his difficult triple assignment — that is, he had kept
the Yankees out of Petersburg, he had secured enormous quantities of
previously inaccessible supplies, and he had kept his First Corps troops
on the alert for a swift return to Lee — it was also painfully true that
he had accomplished nothing that would compare in tactical brilliance
with even the smallest battlefield victory scored by Jackson out in the
Valley a year ago. As a result, the taking of Suffolk, along with its thou-
sands of bluecoats and tons of materiel, began to appeal to him more
and more as a fitting end to these two months of detached service. More-
over, as the notion grew more attractive in his mind's eye, it also began
to appear more feasible to his military judgment, despite the fact that
the Federals inside the place were stronger now, by some 9000 rein-
forcements brought in from Hampton Roads, than they had been at the
outset. There were several ways of assessing this last, however, and one
was that the grandeur of the triumph would be in direct ratio to the
plumpness of the prize. Accordingly, Old Peter wrote to Lee, telling
him what he had in mind and asking if he could not be sent the rest of
his corps in order to assure the success of his assault on the blue intrench-
ments. Foreseeing objections — as well he might — he suggested that
Lee, if need be, could fall back to the line of the Annas, though it was his
own conviction that one corps would be able to stand fast on the Rappa-
hannock in the event of an attack. Lee replied on April 27 that Hooker
was far too strong, and just now far too active, for him to consider a
further weakening of his army. In fact, he countered by asking his lieu-
tenant if he could spare him any of the troops in North Carolina. But
he certainly did not veto the proposal for ending the southside siege with
an assault. "As regards your aggressive movement upon Suffolk," he
wrote, "you must act according to your good judgment. If a damaging
blow could be struck there or elsewhere of course it would be advan-
tageous." He added some doubts as to whether the game would be
worth the candle in this case, but Longstreet could see in the letter a
Death of a Soldier [ 261 ]
relaxation of the urgency for keeping his First Corps divisions practi-
cally uncommitted in order to have them ready to hurry north on short
notice. Consequently, while his foraging crews kept busy, hauling out
the last of the precious wagonloads of hogs and corn and herring, he
turned his thoughts to tactical details of the assault that would cap the
climax by adding the one element — glory — so far lacking in a cam-
paign already productive of much else.
Three days later, however — April 30 — his plans were shat-
tered by a wire from Adjutant General Cooper in Richmond, quoting a
dispatch just received from Lee. Hooker was over the Rappahannock in
great strength, above as well as below Fredericksburg, Lee had an-
nounced, "and it looks as if he was in earnest." Cooper's instructions to
Longstreet were brief and to the point: "Move without delay your
command to this place to effect a junction with General Lee."
Longstreet inquired by telegraph whether this meant that he
was to abandon his wagons, still scattered about on foraging operations,
and risk a quick withdrawal of his men, which would bring out the Fed-
erals hot on his heels. By no means, Cooper replied on May Day. What
had been intended was for him "to secure all possible dispatch without
incurring loss of trains or unnecessary hazard of troops." Having thus
avoided going off half-cocked, Old Peter turned to the always difficult
task of designing a disengagement. After the wagons had been called
in and sent rearward, orders were issued on May 2 for all the troops to
withdraw from the intrenchments the following evening and retire
westward under cover of darkness, burning bridges and felling trees in
their wake to discourage pursuit. This came off on schedule, and after
some sharp skirmishing by rear-guard elements, the whole command
was across the Blackwater by sundown of the 4th. Leaving French to
defend that line, Hood and Pickett moved to Petersburg next day. Dawn
of the 6th found them on the march for the James, leg-weary but eager,
and Longstreet himself was in Richmond before noon, making prepara-
tions to speed both divisions northward by rail for a share in the great
battle reportedly still raging along the near bank of the Rappahannock.
All this ended the following day, however, when he received a wire
from Lee: "The emergency that made your presence so desirable has
passed for the present, so far as I can see, and I desire that you will not
distress your troops by a forced movement to join me, or sacrifice for
that purpose any public interest that your sudden departure might make
it necessary to abandon."
X 4 X
"Go forward, and give us victories," Lincoln had written, and that was
what Hooker had in mind when he crossed the Rappahannock. Nor was
[ 2 62 ] THE CIVIL WAR^" 1863
that all. "I not only expected victory," he would recall when the smoke
had cleared, "I expected to get the whole [rebel] army." That this had
indeed been his intention was confirmed by his chief of staff, who also
declared in retrospect that the real purpose of the campaign had been
"to destroy the army of General Lee where it then was." Earlier, on
the eve of committing what he called "the finest body of soldiers the
sun ever shone on," Fighting Joe had expressed his resolution in terms
that were even more expansive. "My plans are perfect," he announced,
"and when I start to carry them out, may God have mercy on Bobby
Lee; for I shall have none."
Just what those plans were he was not saying, even to those
whose task it would be to translate them into action. In point of fact,
however, they were influenced considerably by the man who had pre-
ceded him in command. In addition to having demonstrated the folly of
launching headlong attacks against prepared intrenchments — intrench-
ments which, incidentally, had been enormously strengthened and ex-
tended since December — Burnside had explored, at least on paper, sev-
eral other approaches to the problem of how to prise the rebels loose
from their works and come to grips with them in the open, where the
advantage of numbers would be likely to decide the issue in favor of
the Union. Now he had departed, taking "his deportment with him out
of the Army of the Potomac, thank God," but Hooker could remember
how the lush-whiskered general had stressed the need for secrecy and
then proceeded to talk with all and sundry about his plans, with the re-
sult that his opponent's only surprise had been at his foolhardiness. So
the new commander, who, by ordinary, was anything but a close-
mouthed man, profited in reverse from his predecessor's example. He
kept his plans to himself.
Not that he did not have any; he did, indeed, and he did not care
who knew it, so long as the particulars remained hidden. These too had
been inherited, however, for the most part. Originally, like Burnside on
the eve of his bloody mid-December commitment, Hooker had planned
to cross the Rappahannock well below Fredericksburg; but this had two
serious disadvantages. It would uncover the direct route to Washington,
which he knew would distress Lincoln, and it would have to be an-
nounced to the Confederates in advance by the laying of pontoons. Up-
stream, on the other hand, the river narrowed and was comparatively
shallow. There were fords in that direction — Banks Ford, five miles
above the town, and United States Ford, seven miles farther west —
behind which he could mass and conceal his troops in order to send them
splashing across in a rush that would smother the south-bank gray out-
post detachments, thus forcing Lee to face about and meet his assailants
without the advantage of those formidable intrenchments. This had been
Burnside's intention in the campaign that ground to a soggy halt in Jan-
uary, but Hooker, by waiting for the advent of fair weather, had greatly
Death of a Soldier [ 263 ]
reduced the likelihood of the movement's coming to any such prema-
ture and ignominious end. Besides, there would be tactical embellish-
ments, designed to increase the Federal chances for an all-out victory.
Principal among these was a plan for taking advantage of the re-
cently demonstrated improvement of the blue cavalry. With Stoneman
outnumbering Stuart better than three to one — just over 11,500 sabers
opposed to just under 3500 — it was Hooker's belief that if his troopers
crossed the river in strength they would be able to have things pretty
much their own way in the Confederate rear. Damage to Lee's communi-
cations and supply lines, coupled with strikes at such vital points as
Gordonsville and Hanover Junction, might throw him into sudden re-
treat; in which case the Federal infantry, coming down on the run from
the upstream crossings, would catch him in flight, strung out on the
roads leading southward, and destroy him. No one so far in this war had
been able to throw Lee into such a panic, it was true, but the reason for
this might be that no one had dared to touch him where he was tender.
At any rate Hooker thought it worth a try, and he had his adjutant gen-
eral draw up careful instructions for Stoneman. His entire corps, less one
brigade but accompanied by all 22 of its guns, was to cross Rappa-
hannock Bridge, thirty miles above Fredericksburg, not later than 7 a.m.
on April 13, "for the purpose of turning the enemy's position on his left,
throwing the cavalry between him and Richmond, isolating him from his
supplies, checking his retreat, and inflicting on him every possible injury
which will tend to his discomfiture and defeat." Lest there be any doubt
that the cavalry chief was to be vigorous in his treatment of the fleeing
Lee, the adjutant then broke into what might one day have become the
model for a pregame Rockne pep talk: "If you cannot cut off from his
column large slices, the general desires that you will not fail to take small
ones. Let your watchword be fight, fight, fight, bearing in mind that
time is as valuable to the general as rebel carcasses."
Stoneman and his 10,000 chosen troopers, along with their 22
guns and a train of 275 wagons containing enough additional food and
forage to sustain them for nine days beyond the lines, were poised for a
crossing at the specified hour. One brigade had already forded the river
a few miles above Rappahannock Bridge, with instructions to come
sweeping down and clear out the rebel horsemen watching from across
the way. But as the three divisions stood to their mounts, awaiting the
order that would send them about their task of cutting slices large and
small from Lee's retreating column, rain began to patter and then to
drum, ominously reminiscent of the downpour that had queered the
Mud March. Now as then, roads became quagmires and the river began
to swell, flooding the fords and tugging at the shaky pilings of the
bridge. Stoneman decided to wait it out. Recalling the brigade that had
crossed, he wired headquarters that his rolling stock was stalled. Hooker
replied that he was to shuck his guns and wagons and proceed without
[264] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1863
them. Stoneman said he would, and set dawn of the 15th as his new
jump-off time. Then the wire went dead. Hooker, having promised to
keep the President posted on the progress of the movement, struck an
optimistic note in a dispatch sent to Washington on that date: "I am re-
joiced that Stoneman had two good days to go up the river, and was
able to cross it before it had become too much swollen. If he can reach
his position [deep in the enemy rear] the storm and mud will not dam-
age our prospects." Lincoln was not so sure. It was his belief, he replied
within the hour, that "General S. is not moving rapidly enough to make
the expedition come to anything. He has now been out three days, two
of which were unusually fair weather, and all three without hindrance
from the enemy, and yet he is not 25 miles from where he started. To
reach his point he still has 60 to go, another river (the Rapidan) to cross,
and will be hindered by the enemy. By arithmetic, how many days will
it take him to do it? ... I greatly fear it is another failure already."
His fears were confirmed the following day when a courier
reached Falmouth with a letter from upstream. "I cannot say what has
been the state of affairs away from this vicinity," Stoneman wrote, "but
here, at the hour of my last dispatch, the condition of things may be
judged of when I tell you that almost every rivulet was swimming, and
the roads next to impassable for horses or pack-mules. . . . The railroad
bridge has been partly carried away by the freshet. The river is out of
its banks, and was still on the rise a few hours ago. . . . My dispatch [set-
ting a new date for the crossing] was based upon the expectation that
we were to be favored with a continuation of fair weather. It certainly
was not predicated upon the expectation of being overtaken by one of
the most violent rainstorms I have ever been caught in." There was
much else by way of explanation and excuse, including the news that
three men and several horses had been drowned that morning while at-
tempting to cross what had been a nearly dry stream bed the day before.
But the gist of the long letter came about midway: "The elements seem
to have conspired to prevent the accomplishment of a brilliant cavalry
operation."
Hooker was disappointed. He told Stoneman to stay where he
was, keep up his reserve supply of rations, and be ready to take off
southward "as soon as the roads and rivers will permit." However, the
rain showed no sign of a real letup. For nearly two weeks it kept fall-
ing, with only a few fair days mixed in to mock the army's immobility,
and all this time Hooker was champing at the bit, anxious to put his
troops in motion for the kill. As the days went by, his bitterness in-
creased. He began to doubt that Stoneman and the cavalry were up to
carrying out the mission he had assigned them; he began, in fact, to see
room for improvement in the plans he had called perfect. Since he had
the Confederates outnumbered better than two to one — as he knew by
reports from the excellent intelligence service he had established as part
Death of a Soldier [ 265 ]
of his staff — he had a rare chance to attack them, front and back, with
separate columns each of which would be superior to the gray mass
clamped between them. Instead of 10,000 cavalry, he would put 60,000
infantry and artillery in Lee's immediate rear, blocking his retreat while
the other 60,000 pounded his front and the troopers far in his rear
slashed at his lines of supply and communication. Isolated and sur-
rounded, prised out of his intrenchments and grievously outnumbered,
Lee would be pulverized; Hooker would "get the whole army." It
was a pleasant thing to contemplate, not only because of its classic tacti-
cal simplicity, but also because it would involve what might be called
poetic justice, a turning of the tables on the old fox who so often had
divided his own army, but without the advantage of numbers, in hopes
of destroying the very soldiers who now were about to destroy him.
What was more, as Hooker pored over his maps to plan the logis-
tical details of the proposed envelopment, he found that the terrain
seemed made to order for just such a maneuver. Banks Ford was stoutly
defended from across the way, the rebels having honeycombed the dom-
inant south-bank heights with trenches that formed the left-flank anchor
of their line, and U. S. Ford was guarded nearly as heavily by an in-
trenched outpost detachment; besides which, the recent rains had
swollen them both well past wading depth, so that his previous design
to seize them in a sudden, splashing rush was now impractical. On
the other hand Kelly's Ford, fifteen miles above the junction of the Rap-
pannock and the Rapidan, which occurred just over a mile above U. S.
Ford, was lightly held, unfortified, and comparatively shallow. Al-
though crossing there would call for a long approach march and would
involve another river crossing when the column reached the Rapidan,
the advantages greatly outweighed the drawbacks. For one thing,
Kelly's Ford was far enough out beyond the enemy flank to give hope
that, with luck, the march and perhaps both crossings could be accom-
plished before the rebs knew what was afoot, and for another it would
afford a covered approach, along excellent roads traversing a wooded
region known locally as the Wilderness, to within striking distance of the
Confederate rear. Moreover, as the column moved eastward along the
south bank of the Rappahannock it would uncover both U.S. and Banks
Fords, which would not only shorten considerably its lines of supply and
communication, thereby making it possible for the two halves of the
blue army to reinforce each other quickly if an emergency arose in
either direction, but would also give the flankers, in the case of the Banks
Ford defenses, control of high ground that dominated much of the pres-
ent rebel line of fortifications; Lee would be obliged to come out into
the open, whether he wanted to or not. All this sounded fine to Hooker.
Admittedly he was about to engage in the risky business of dividing his
army in the presence of the enemy, but Lee had proved on more than
one occasion that the profits more than justified the risk, even though
[ 266
THE CIVIL W A R 38r 1 8 6 3
he had done so with the numerical odds against him; whereas with
Hooker it would be the other way around. It was this last that gave him
substantial reason to hope for the Cannae which so far, and for all his
vaunted skill in battle, had eluded Lee.
Translating theory into action, Fighting Joe sent orders on April
26 for the corps of Slocum, Howard, and Meade to march for Kelly's
Ford at sunrise the following morning. They were to be in position
there not later than 4 p.m. of the 28th, at which time they were to head
south for the Rapidan, cross that river at Ely's and Germanna Fords, and
take the roads leading southeast to the Orange Turnpike, then proceed
due east along it to a position covering a crossroads hamlet called Chan-
cellorsville, eight miles west of Lee's line and less than half that far from
the ragged eastern rim of the Wilderness. Couch — minus Gibbon's divi-
sion, which could not be moved just yet because its Falmouth camp was
in plain view of the enemy on Marye's Heights — was to march at dawn
of the 29th to a position in the rear of Banks Ford and stand ready to
throw pontoons for a crossing as soon as Slocum's advance flanked the
rebels out of the trenches across the way. Meanwhile, with 60,000 Fed-
eral soldiers marching against the Confederate rear, the corps of Sedg-
wick, Reynolds, and Sickles, aggregating another 60,000, would move
down to the riverbank south of Fredericksburg, near the point of Frank-
lin's crossing in December,
where they would establish a
west-bank bridgehead on the
29th for the purpose of dem-
onstrating against Lee's front,
thus distracting his attention
from what would be going on
behind him and keeping him in
doubt as to where the heavi-
est blow would fall. Stoneman
would add to the confusion by
striking first at the Virginia Central Railroad, then eastward along it
to the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, where he was to harass
and slow down the gray army if it attempted to escape the jaws of the
blue vise by falling back on its threatened capital. Still mindful of the
need for secrecy, Hooker enjoined the generals with the upstream col-
umn to regard the "destination of their commands as strictly confidential."
Apparently his left hand was to be kept from knowing what his right
hand was about, but he lifted the veil a little by telling Sedgwick, who
was in charge of the downstream column, to carry the enemy works
"at all hazards" in case Lee detached "a considerable part of his force
against the troops operating . . . west of Fredericksburg." Whether the
main attack would be delivered against the enemy's front or his rear —
that is, by Sedgwick's 60,000 or by Slocum's — remained to be seen. At
Death of a Soldier [ 267 ]
the critical moment, probably on the 30th but certainly by May Day,
Hooker would ride to Chancellorsville, make his estimate of the situation,
and then, like an ambidextrous boxer, swing with either hand for the
knockout.
The upstream march began on schedule Monday, April 27, de-
spite a slow drizzle that threatened to undo the good which three days
of fair weather had done the roads. Slogging toward Hartwood Church
and Morrisville, where they would turn off south for Kelly's Ford, the
veterans chanted as they trudged:
"The Union boys are moving on the left and on the right,
The bugle call is sounding, our shelters we must strike;
Joe Hooker is our leader, he takes his whiskey strong,
So our knapsacks we will sling, and go marching along.'''
Sweating under fifty to sixty pounds of weight, which included eight
days' rations, a pair of blankets, a thick wool overcoat, and forty rounds
of ammunition each, they interpreted the word "sling" as they saw fit,
shedding knapsacks by the roadside to be gleaned by civilian scavengers
— "ready finders," the army called them — who moved in their wake
and profited from their prodigality. Hooker's administrative sensibilities
were offended by the waste, but he was consoled by the fact that the
march was otherwise orderly and rapid in spite of the showers, which
fortunately left off before midday without softening the roads. In re-
sponse to a wire that afternoon from a fretful Lincoln — "How does it
look now?" — he managed to be at once reticent and reassuring: "I am
not sufficiently advanced to give an opinion. We are busy. Will tell you
all soon as I can, and have it satisfactory." Riding next day up to Mor-
risville, through rain that had come on again to slow the march and
throw it several hours behind schedule, he was pleased all the same to
note that the column had turned south for the Rappahannock, and he
sent an aide ahead with a message urging Slocum to make up for lost
time: "The general desires that not a moment be lost until our troops
are established at or near Chancellorsville. From that moment all will be
ours."
He sounded buoyant, and presently he had cause for feeling even
more so. By dusk the head of the flanking column was approaching
Kelly's Ford, and Hooker received word from his chief of staff at Fal-
mouth that Couch had his two divisions in position behind Banks Ford,
as ordered, and was improving the waiting time by extending the tele-
graph to U.S. Ford, in case that proved to be a better point for crossing.
Sedgwick had been delayed by the rain, Butterfield added, but he had
his three corps on the march and would begin throwing five pontoon
bridges across the river below Fredericksburg on schedule in the morn-
ing. Moreover, though the weather had been too gusty to permit spy-
[268] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
glass observation from the bobbing gondolas of Professor T. S. C.
Lowe's two balloons, the ruse of leaving Gibbon's division in its ex-
posed camp seemed to have worked as intended; Lowe reported that,
from what he could see, the Confederate trenches "appeared to be occu-
pied as usual," indicating that Lee almost certainly had no intimation that
the various Federal columns were on the move for positions from which
to accomplish his destruction. All this was about as encouraging as
could be, but Hooker, being painfully familiar with the tricks of the old
fox across the way, was leaving as little as possible to chance. He wired
Lowe to send a balloon up anyhow, despite the wind and darkness, "to
see where the enemy's campfires are," not forgetting to add: "Someone
acquainted with the position and location of the ground and of the en-
emy's forces should go up."
By the time the Professor — the title was complimentary; his
official designation was "Chief of Aeronauts, Army of the Potomac,"
and his basic uniform was a voluminous linen duster — got a balloon up
into the windy night for a look at the rebel campfires, Howard's corps
was over the Rappahannock, crossing dry-shod on a pontoon bridge
just completed by the engineers, and had taken up a position on the
south bank to guard against a surprise attack while the other two corps
were crossing. Slocum came over at dawn, followed by Meade, who
struck out southeastward for Ely's Ford; then Howard fell in behind
Slocum, who had already headed south for Germanna Ford. Behind all
three came Stoneman, a full day late and complaining bitterly that the
alert order had not allowed him time to call in his 10,000 horsemen
from their camps around Warrenton. He set out for Raccoon Ford, ten
miles west of Germanna, for a descent on the Virginia Central in the
vicinity of Louisa Courthouse, leaving Hooker a single 1000-man brigade
of three slim regiments to accompany the infantry on the march and
another 500 troopers to guard the deserted north-bank camps and in-
stallations. The foot soldiers pushed ahead, stepping fast but warily now;
for it was here in the V of the rivers that Pope, for all his bluster, had
nearly come to grief in August. Neither column encountered any real
difficulty, however, in the course of its daylong hike to the Rapidan.
Nor did Slocum's run into much trouble after it got there. His advance
guard, splashing its way through the chest-deep water, surprised a
drowsy 100-man rebel detachment at Germanna, capturing a number of
graybacks before they knew what was upon them. Finding timbers col-
lected here on the south bank for the construction of a bridge, the jubi-
lant bluecoats set to work and put them to use in short order, with the
result that the rest of their corps, and all of Howard's, made a second
river crossing without having to wet their socks.
Meade's troops had no such luck. Though he too encountered no
opposition in the V, his march to Ely's was longer than Slocum's to
Germanna, and he found no bridge materials awaiting him at its end.
Death of a Soldier [ 269 ]
Coming down to the ford at sunset the advance guard plunged across
the cold, swift-running Rapidan, chased off the startled pickets on the
opposite bank, and set to work building fires to light the way for the
rest of the corps approaching the crossing in the dusk. Regiment by regi-
ment the three road-worn divisions entered the foam-flecked, scrotum-
tightening water and emerged to toil up the steep south bank, which
became increasingly slippery as the slope was churned to gumbo by the
passage of nearly 16,000 soldiers, all dripping wet from the armpits
down. Once across, they gathered about the fires for warmth, some in
good spirits, some in bad, each arriving cluster somewhat muddier than
the one before, but all about equally wet and cold. By midnight the last
man was over. Low in the east, the late-risen moon, burgeoning toward
the full, had the bruised-orange color of old gold, and while all around
them the whippoorwills sang plaintively in the moon-drenched woods,
the men lay rolled in their blankets, feet to the fire, catching snatches of
sleep while awaiting the word to fall back into column. Meade had them
on the go again by sunup of the last day of April, still marching south-
east, but now through an eerie and seemingly God-forsaken region;
the Wilderness, it was called, and they could see why. Mostly a tangle
of second-growth scrub oak and pine, choked with vines and brambles
that would tear the clothes from a man's back within minutes of the
time he left the road, it was interrupted briefly at scattered points by oc-
casional small clearings whose abandoned cabins and sag-roofed barns
gave proof, if such was needed, that no amount of hard work could
scratch a living from this jungle. To make matters worse, rebel cavalry
slashed at the column from time to time, emerging suddenly from am-
bush, then back again, apparently for the purpose of taking prisoners
who would identify their units. Meade did not like the look of things
any better than the men did. He rode with the van and set a rapid pace,
wanting to get them out of here, and for once they were altogether will-
ing. Chancellorsville was less than half a dozen miles from the ford,
and though it was still a good three miles short of open country where
he could deploy his troops and bring his guns to bear, he remembered
that Hooker had said that once the flankers were "established" in that
vicinity, "all will be ours."
Arriving about an hour before noon, still without having en-
countered anything more than token resistance from the enemy cavalry
and none at all from the famed, hard-marching rebel infantry, he found
that for all its grand-sounding name the crossroads hamlet — if it could
be called even that — consisted of nothing more than a large, multi-
chimneyed brick-and-timber mansion, with tall slim pillars across its
front supporting a double-decked veranda, and three or four outbuild-
ings scattered about the quadrants of the turnpike intersection. There
was, however, a hundred-acre clearing, which seemed expansive in-
deed after what he had just emerged from and would re-enter when he
[270] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
moved on, and there were also four ladies, of various ages and in bright
spring dresses, who likewise were a relief of sorts despite their show of
pique at having to receive unwelcome guests. At any rate, Meade's
spirits rose as he waited for Slocum and Howard, whose troops had the
longer march today. Much that he previously had not understood,
mainly because of Hooker's refusal to give out details of his plan — "It's
all right" had been his usual and evasive reply to questions from com-
manders of all ranks — suddenly became much clearer to Meade, now
that he was within a half-day's march of Lee's rear without its having
cost him anything more than the handful of men gobbled up by the
graybacks in the course of his plunge through the heart of the Wilder-
ness. Now that he believed he saw the whole design, his dourness gave
way to something approaching exaltation. By 2 o'clock, when Slocum
arrived at the head of his two-corps column, Meade was fairly beside
himself. "This is splendid, Slocum," he cried, displaying an exuberance
that seemed all the more abandoned because it was so unlike him; "hur-
rah for Old Joe! We are on Lee's flank and he doesn't know it."
What he wanted now, he added with no slackening of enthusi-
asm, was to push on eastward without further delay, at least another
couple of miles before nightfall, "and we'll get out of this Wilderness."
Slocum felt much the same way about it. But while they talked a courier
arrived with a dispatch signed by Butterfield, relaying an order from
Hooker: "The general directs that no advance be made from Chancel-
lorsville until the columns are concentrated. He expects to be at Chan-
cellorsville tonight."
Somewhat crestfallen, and nearly as puzzled now as he had been
before he saw what he had believed was the light, Meade went about the
business of getting his troops into bivouac. Slocum and Howard were do-
ing the same when presently, at about 4.30 and true to his word, Fight-
ing Joe himself came riding up on his big white horse, cheered lustily
by the men along the roadside, and explained the logic behind the re-
straining order. The easterly advance along the turnpike had already
flanked the rebels out of their U.S. Ford defenses, permitting Couch to
sidle upstream for a crossing there instead of at Banks Ford, where the
defenders were still in occupation; he was on the march for Chancellors-
ville even now, and Gibbon had been alerted to join him from Falmouth
with his third division. This would put four whole corps in the Confed-
erate rear, as had been intended from the start, but the northern com-
mander had it in mind to do even more by way of cinching the victory
already within reach. Sedgwick's bridgehead having been established
across the river below Fredericksburg with a minimal resistance from
the rebels on the heights — who thus were clamped securely between
two superior Union forces which now could reinforce each other, rapidly
and at will, by way of U.S. Ford — Hooker had decided to summon
Sickles from the left to add the weight of his corps to the blow about
Death of a Soldier [ 271 ]
to be delivered against the more vulnerable enemy rear. His arrival to-
night or tomorrow morning would bring the striking force up to a
strength of 77,865 effectives within the five corps. With three regiments
of cavalry added, along with several batteries detached from the artil-
lery reserve, engineer troops, and headquarters personnel, the total
would reach about 80,000 of all arms, who then could be flung in mass
against Lee's rear to accomplish his destruction with a single May Day
blow.
Meade was considerably reassured; he saw in fact, or believed he
saw, a brighter light than ever. A rare attention to detail — pontoons
in place on time, road space properly allotted to columns on the march,
surprise achieved through ruse and secrecy — had made possible, at
practically no cost at all, one of the finest maneuvers in military history.
Now this same attentiveness, with regard to the massing of troops for
the ultimate thrust, would also make possible one of the grandest vic-
tories. Sure enough, Couch arrived before nightfall and went into biv-
ouac a mile north of the crossroads; Sickles sent word that he was on the
way. Once more careful planning had paid off. A New York Herald
correspondent who had accompanied the flankers shared the pervading
optimism. "It is rumored that the enemy are falling back toward Rich-
mond," he wrote, "but a fight tomorrow seems more than probable. We
expect it, and we also expect to be victorious." Hooker expected it, too,
because he knew the rumor to be untrue. Sedgwick, from his low-lying,
close-up position south of Fredericksburg, and Professor Lowe, from
the gondola of one of his big yellow balloons riding high over Stafford
Heights, had both assured him that the Confederates still occupied the
ridge beyond the town. Reynolds, in fact, had reported to headquarters
this afternoon that he believed some of the troops in his front had just
arrived from Richmond: which brought the reply, "General Hooker
hopes they are from Richmond, as the greater will be our success."
His spirits were high, and so were those of his men, who cheered
him to the echo, especially when a congratulatory order was read to
them that evening in their camps around Chancellorsville: "It is with
heartfelt satisfaction that the commanding general announces to the
army that the operations of the last three days have determined that our
enemy must either ingloriously fly, or come out from behind his de-
fenses and give us battle on our own ground, where certain destruction
awaits him."
Battle on his "own ground" — setting aside for the moment the
question of whether any part of the Old Dominion could ever properly
be so termed in relation to the man Lee called Mr F. J. Hooker — was
exactly what Stonewall Jackson had been aching to give him for the
past three months. "We must make this campaign an exceedingly active
[272] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
one," the Virginian declared as spring approached. "Only thus can a
weaker country cope with a stronger. It must make up in activity what
it lacks in strength." Fredericksburg, for all its one-sided tactical bril-
liance, had been a strategic disappointment to him, and he hoped to com-
pensate for this in the great battle he knew would be fought as soon as
the Federals decided the time had come for them to attempt another
Rappahannock crossing. "My trust is in God," he said quietly, seated one
day in his tent and musing on the future. But then, anticipating the hour
when the blue host would venture within his reach, his patience broke
its bounds and he rose bristling from his chair, eyes aglow. "I wish
they would come!" he cried.
These past three months had been perhaps the happiest of his
military life. In fact, despite his eagerness to interrupt any or all of them
with bloodshed, February, March, and April, following as they did his
thirty-ninth birthday in late January, had been idyllic, at least by Jack-
sonian standards. Aside from administrative concerns, such as the usual
spate of court-martials and the preparation of battle reports, grievously
neglected up to now because he had been too busy fighting to find time
for writing — the total was fourteen full-scale battles in the previous
eight months, with the reduction and capture of Harpers Ferry added
for good measure — his principal occupation was prayer and meditation,
relieved from time to time by evenings of unaccustomed social pleas-
ure. His quarters, an office cottage on the grounds of a Moss Neck es-
tate, were comfortable to the point of lavishness, which prompted Jeb
Stuart to express mock horror at the erstwhile Presbyterian deacon's
evident fall from spirituality, and Lee himself, in the course of a particu-
larly fine meal featuring oysters, turkey, and a waiter decked out in a
fresh white apron, taunted the high-ranking guests and their host with
the remark that they were merely playing at being soldiers; they should
come and dine with him, he said, if they wanted to see how a real soldier
lived. Stonewall took the raillery and the chiding in good part, at once
flustered and delighted. But the best of the idyl came at its close. The
last nine days, beginning April 20, were spent with the wife he had not
seen in just over a year and the five-month-old daughter he had never
seen at all.
He had moved by then, back into his tent near Hamilton's Cross-
ing, which did much to reduce the Calvinistic twinges. "It is rather a
relief," he said, "to get where there will be less comfort in a room." But
for the occasion of the long-anticipated visit he accepted the hospitality
of the Yerby house, in which Lee had stayed for a time under doctor's
orders, and was given a large room, with no less than three beds, where
he could be alone with his wife and get to know the baby. Outside duty
hours, the couple took walks in the woods and along the heights over-
looking the Fredericksburg plain whose December scars were beginning
to be grassed over. It was the happiest of times for them both. The days
Death of a Soldier [ 273 ]
went by in a rush, however, for there in full view across the way were
the enemy guns and the yellow observation balloons, reminders that the
idyl was likely to have a sudden end. And so it was. Dawn, Wednesday,
April 29; booted feet on the stairs and a knock at the bedroom door;
"That looks as if Hooker were crossing," Jackson said. He drew on
some clothes and went out, was gone ten minutes, and then returned to
finish dressing. The visit was over, he told Anna as he buckled on his
sword. He would come back if he could, but if he could not he would
send an aide to see her to the train. After a last embrace, and a last long
look at the baby, he was gone. Presently the staff chaplain arrived to
tell her the general would not be coming back. While she was packing
she began hearing the rattle of musketry from down by the river. It
grew louder behind her, all the way to Guiney Station, where she
boarded an almost empty train for Richmond.
Lee expressed even less surprise when an aide sent by Jackson
came into his tent before sunup to give him the news. Still abed, Lee
said teasingly: "Captain, what do you young men mean by waking a
man out of his sleep?" Hooker had thrown his pontoons near the site of
the lower December crossing, the aide replied; he was over the river in
force. "Well, I thought I heard firing," Lee said, "and I was beginning
to think it was time some of you young fellows were coming to tell
me what it was all about. You want me to send a message to your good
general, Captain? Tell him that I am sure he knows what to do. I will
meet him at the front very soon."
Shortly afterwards, peering through rifts in the early morning
fog, he saw for himself that the Federals had one bridge down and others
under construction, all near the point now known as Franklin's Crossing,
just over a mile below the town. They did not attempt an advance across
the plain, but seemed content to stay within their bridgehead, at least
for the present, covered by the long-range guns on Stafford Heights. Re-
sisting the temptation to attack while the build-up was in progress, Lee
decided to make his defense along the ridge, as he had done in December.
Accordingly, he told Jackson to bring up the rest of his corps from be-
low, and ordered the reserve artillery to leave its rearward camps and
move forward into line. In notifying Richmond of these developments,
although he knew it was unlikely that the two detached divisions would
arrive in time for a share in the battle now shaping up, he requested
that Longstreet be alerted for a return from Suffolk as soon as possible.
Before noon, the situation was complicated by a dispatch from Stuart, in-
forming Lee that a blue force of about 14,000 infantry and six guns had
crossed at Kelly's Ford and appeared to be headed for Gordonsville.
This was corrected a few hours later, however, when the cavalry com-
mander sent word that the enemy column had turned in the direction of
Ely's and Germanna Fords; so far, Jeb added, he had taken prisoners
from three different Union corps, though he did not say whether he
[274] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
thought all three were present in full strength. In reaction, Lee sent in-
structions for Stuart to move eastward at once and thus avoid being cut
off from headquarters. This would leave the Federal cavalry free to
operate practically unmolested against his lines of supply; yet, bad as
that was, it was by no means as bad as having to fight blind when he and
the greatly superior Federal main body came within grappling distance
of each other, here on Marye's Heights or elsewhere. Just after sundown
a third courier arrived to report the bluecoats across both Rapidan fords.
Though Lee still had no reliable information as to the strength of this
flanking column, it was clear by now that some part of Hooker's
army — a considerable part, for all he knew — was in the Confederate
rear and moving closer, hour by hour. Whatever its strength, the threat
it offered was too grave to be ignored. Nor did he ignore it. Two bri-
gades of Richard Anderson's division were already at U.S. Ford;
Lee instructed him to draw them in and move the others rearward to
meet them in the vicinity of Chancellorsville, where the roads leading
south and east from Ely's and Germanna Fords came together, "taking
the strongest line you can and holding it to the best advantage." To Mc-
Laws, who commanded Longstreet's other remaining division, went or-
ders alerting him for a possible westward march, in case it turned out
that Anderson was not strong enough to stop the blue columns last re-
ported to be moving in his direction. Anderson pulled out of the line
at 9 o'clock, and after a three-hour march through driving rain informed
headquarters that his division was concentrated near Chancellorsville by
midnight. Knowing that his rear was protected at least to this extent, Lee
turned in to rest for tomorrow.
Morning of the 30th disclosed a total of five bridges spanning the
river below Fredericksburg. Though the bluecoats had enlarged their
west-bank foothold, they showed no disposition to advance. In fact,
they were intrenching their perimeter — as if in expectation, not of de-
livering, but of receiving an attack. Jackson, for one, was eager to give
it to them, whereas Lee preferred to draw them farther away from their
heavy guns on Stafford Heights. Both men thus reacted as they had
done to the similar situation in December; but this time Lee offered to
defer to his lieutenant's judgment. "If you think you can effect any-
thing," he said, "I will give orders for the attack." While Stonewall went
about conducting a more thorough examination of the bridgehead, pre-
paratory to moving against it, Lee received another cavalry report that
the Federals were advancing eastward from Germanna Ford, along the
Orange Turnpike, while a substantial train of wagons and artillery was
across Ely's Ford with a heavy infantry escort, following in the wake of
the column that had crossed at that point the night before. A little later
— it was now past noon — Anderson sent word that he had taken up a
good defensive position east of Chancellorsville, along the near fringe of
the Wilderness, and was preparing to resist the blue advance, So far, all
Death of a Soldier [ 275 ]
he had seen of the enemy were cavalry outriders, he added, but he
thought he was going to need support when the infantry came up. Lee
replied at 2.30 that Anderson was to dig in where he was, providing
hasty fortifications not only for his own division but also for McLaws',
which was on call to join him in case it was needed. "Set all your spades
to work as vigorously as possible," Lee urged, and sent him some en-
gineers to assist in drawing his line, as well as a battalion of artillery from
the reserve. Then he turned back to see how Jackson was doing.
The fact was, Jackson was not doing so well, at least by his
own interpretation. A careful reconnaissance had shown the enemy
bridgehead to be stronger than he had supposed; he regretfully admitted
that an assault would be unwise. Lee took out his binoculars for a better
look at the bluecoats massed on the plain below and on the heights be-
yond the river. He took his time, evaluating reports while he peered.
There was by now much disagreement among his officers as to whether
Hooker was planning to deliver his heaviest blow from upstream or
down. Presently, however, Lee returned the glasses to their case and
snapped it shut with a decisive gesture. "The main attack will come from
above," he said.
Having made this estimate of the situation he proceeded to act on
it with an urgency required by the fact that a farther advance by the
Federals approaching his rear would put them between him and Rich-
mond, in which case he would have no choice except to retreat. He
might have to do so anyhow, under the menace of Hooker's skillful
combinations, but he was determined, now as always, to yield no ground
he saw any chance of holding. His decision, then — announced in orders
which he retired to his tent to write and issue soon after nightfall —
was to turn on the rearward Union column with a preponderance of his
badly outnumbered army, leaving a skeleton force to defend his present
position against a possible frontal assault by the blue mass on the plain.
Early's division of Jackson's corps drew the latter assignment, reinforced
by a brigade from McLaws, whose other three brigades were to pro-
ceed at once to join Anderson in the intrenchments he was digging four
miles east of Chancellorsville. Jackson was to follow McLaws with his
remaining three divisions "at daylight tomorrow morning . . . and make
arrangements to repulse the enemy." This would give Lee a total of
45,000 troops, plus Stuart when he came up, to block the path of the
enemy columns moving eastward through the Wilderness, and barely
10,000, including the artillery reserve, to hold the Fredericksburg ridge,
which by tomorrow would have become his rear. The risks were great,
but perhaps no greater than the odds that led him to accept them. At
any rate, if it came to a simultaneous fight in both directions, he would
have the advantage of interior lines, even though he would have gained
it by inviting annihilation.
McLaws pulled back at midnight, leaving Barksdale's Mississippi-
[276] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
ans behind for a possible repetition of their mid-December exploit.
Early spread his lone division all up and down the five-mile stretch of in-
trenchments from Marye's Heights to Hamilton's Crossing, mindful of
Lee's admonition that he was to keep up a bristling pretense of strength
and aggressive intentions. Jackson, told to move at daylight, was on the
march by 3 a.m. Riding ahead of his troops he arrived soon after sunrise
at Tabernacle Church, the left-flank anchor of Anderson's newly estab-
lished line, which McLaws was busy extending northward to the vicinity
of Duerson's Mill, covering Banks Ford. His instructions were to "make
arrangements to repulse the enemy," and to Stonewall this meant, quite
simply, to attack him. If he had no orders to proceed beyond this point,
neither did he have any to remain here. Besides, there was no enemy in
sight except an occasional scampering blue horseman in brief silhouette
against the verdant background of the Wilderness. Before he could re-
pulse the enemy he would have to find him, and the obvious way to find
him would be to go where he was — reportedly, four miles dead
ahead at Chancellorsville. So he told Anderson and McLaws to leave off
digging and get their men in motion. He would go forward with them.
If they ran into trouble up ahead, and it was clear by now that trouble
was what they definitely were going to find in that direction, his three
divisions would soon be up to lend support.
It was about 1 1 o'clock of a fine May Day morning by the time
they got their troops into march formation and set out, preceded by
clouds of skirmishers. The advance was by two main roads, the turn-
pike on the right and the plank road on the left; McLaws took the
former, Anderson the latter, accompanied by Jackson himself. Almost as
soon as they entered the green hug of the Wilderness, McLaws made
contact with the enemy advancing on the turnpike. At 11.20 the first
gun of the meeting engagement boomed. Then others began to roar in
that direction. Jackson's instructions were for both divisions to keep
pushing west until they ran into something solid. Presently he received a
dispatch from Stuart, who was near at hand. "I will close in on the flank,"
Jeb wrote, "and will help all I can when the ball opens May God
grant us victory." Stonewall replied, "I trust that God will grant us a
great victory." But he added, by way of showing what he had in mind
to reinforce his trust: "Keep closed on Chancellorsville."
Hooker too had started forward at 1 1 o'clock, so that the meeting
engagement occurred about midway between Chancellorsville and Tab-
ernacle Church. Sickles having come up that morning, the northern com-
mander was set to throw a five-corps Sunday punch. This was no time
for wild blows, however, and he made his preparations with the same
concern for detail as before. Slocum would advance along the plank road
on the right, supported by Howard; Meade would take the left, along
Death of a Soldier [ 277 1
the turnpike, supported by Couch; Sickles would remain in general re-
serve, on call to add the extra weight that might be needed in either di-
rection. Nor was Fighting Joe committing the amateur's gaffe of for-
getting he had another hand to box with. Orders had gone the previous
evening to Sedgwick: "It is not known, of course, what effect the ad-
vance will have upon the enemy, and the general commanding directs
that you observe [Lee's] movements with the utmost vigilance, and,
should he expose a weak point, attack him in full force and destroy him."
This was made even more specific by instructions sent to Sedgwick as the
advance got under way. No matter whether the rebels weakened their
Fredericksburg line or not, he was "to threaten an attack in full force at
1 o'clock and to continue in that attitude until further orders. Let the
demonstration be as severe as can be," Hooker added, "but not an attack,"
unless of course the enemy afforded a real opening, in which case the
earlier instructions would obtain and Sedgwick would go for a left-hand
knockout.
Slocum and Meade stepped off smartly, much encouraged by a
circular prescribing the order of march and closing: "After the move-
ment commences, headquarters will be at Tabernacle Church." It
sounded as if Hooker meant business this time. Also it made considerable
tactical sense, for the turnpike and the plank road, after branching off
from one another at Chancellorsville, converged near that objective. Out
of the woods at last, the two lead corps would be concentrated for the
final lunge, supported by Howard, Couch, and Sickles, who would fol-
low close behind. For more than half the distance, however, these two
main Wilderness arteries diverged: with the result that as the two col-
umns moved eastward, hemmed in by the dense jungle of stunted trees
and brambly underbrush, they lost contact with each other. As an addi-
tional complication, Meade had one division on the pike and two on the
River Road, which curved northward to outflank the rebel intrenchments
at Banks Ford; so that here, too, contact was quickly lost. Two miles
from its crossroads starting point, out of touch with Slocum on the right
and the rest of its own corps on the left, the division on the turnpike
came under fire from enemy skirmishers as it plodded up a long slope
whose crest would bring the eastern rim of the Wilderness in view. It
so happened that this division, commanded by Major General George
Sykes, could lay substantial claims to being the sturdiest in the Army
of the Potomac, two of its three brigades being composed exclusively
of U.S. regulars, while the third was made up of battle-hardened New
York volunteers who had stood fast on Henry Hill and thereby saved the
fleeing remnant of Pope's army from utter destruction at Bull Run.
As steady now as then, they went smoothly into attack formation and
drove the rebel skirmishers back to the crest of the low ridge. There,
however, they came upon the Confederate main body, long gray lines
of infantry supported by clusters of guns that broke into a roar at the
[278] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
sight of bluecoats. Calling a halt, Sykes sent back word that he was
badly in need of help. Then, as the gray mass started forward, over-
lapping both of his open flanks, he began a rearward movement down
the pike, dribbling casualties as he went. What would be known as the
Battle of Chancellorsville had opened.
Couch was already coming up with Major General Winfield S.
Hancock's division, which he threw into the line at once to stabilize the
situation preparatory to resuming the advance. Before this last could be
accomplished, however, a courier arrived with orders from Hooker:
"Withdraw both divisions to Chancellorsville." Couch was amazed.
Here he was, as he later said, with "open country in front and the com-
manding position," yet his chief was telling him to retire. Sykes and
Hancock were equally puzzled. They too wanted to push ahead in ac-
cordance with the original instructions. With their approval, Couch sent
an aide to inform Hooker that the situation was under control and the
troops were about ready to continue their drive along the pike. Off to
the right, a mounting bank of smoke and the rumble of guns told them
that Slocum was likewise engaged and seemed to be holding his own,
while Meade's other two divisions apparently had encountered no re-
sistance at all on the left. But within half an hour the aide returned with
a peremptory repetition of the order: Pull back to Chancellorsville with-
out delay. Couch considered outright disobedience. Brigadier General
G. K. Warren, chief engineer of the army, urged him to adopt just such
a course while he himself rode back to explain its advantages to Hooker.
He spurred rearward; but as soon as he left, Couch's West-Point-
ihculcated instinct for obedience took over. Complying with the order
to retire, he withdrew the two divisions, first Sykes, then Hancock. The
disengagement had been completed, except for two rear-guard regi-
ments still in line, when a third message arrived from Hooker: "Hold on
until 5 o'clock." Evidently Warren had stated his case persuasively, but
Couch by now was disgusted. "Tell General Hooker he is too late," he
replied testily. "The enemy are already on my right and rear. I am in
full retreat."
In point of fact, his right was more seriously threatened than he
knew. Slocum, followed as closely by Anderson as Couch himself was
being followed by McLaws, had already fallen back down the plank
road in accordance with similar instructions from headquarters. Meade
too was backtracking by now, but unpursued, having encountered noth-
ing substantial in the way of resistance on the left. As a result he was even
more astounded than Couch had been at receiving the order to with-
draw. Within sight of Duerson's Mill, he had been within easy reach of
Banks Ford, control of which would shorten greatly the lines of supply
and communication between the army's divided wings. To be told to fall
back under such circumstances, with clear going to his front and his lines
extending along the crest of the eastward rise, was more exasperating
Death of a Soldier [ 279 ]
than anything he had encountered up to now. Once again Hooker had
built up his hopes only to dash them with a peremptory order which not
only called for a halt, as before, but also insisted on a retirement. Meade
was furious. "If he thinks he can't hold the top of a hill, how does he
expect to hold the bottom of it?" the Pennsylvanian stormed as he com-
plied with the instructions to fall back.
That was about 2 o'clock. All three corps commanders were
hard put to understand what had come over Fighting Joe in the scant
three hours since they had set out from the crossroads they now were
under orders to return to. At the outset, with the announcement that his
headquarters would be leapfrogged four miles forward while the move-
ment was in progress, he had seemed confident of delivering a knockout
blow. Then suddenly, at the first sputter of musketry on the turnpike,
he had abandoned all his aggressive intentions and ordered everything
back for a defense of Chancellorsville, deep in the Wilderness. Why?
They did not know, but already they were beginning to formulate theo-
ries which they and others down the years would enlarge on. For one
thing, that excellent intelligence section back at Falmouth was hard at
work, forwarding information disturbing enough to jangle the nerves of
the steadiest man alive. According to one rebel deserter, brought in for
interrogation the night before, Longstreet's whole corps had left Suffolk,
presumably by rail, and had "gone to Culpeper," which would place it
directly in rear of the Union flanking column and scarcely a day's march
away. The prisoner added "that Lee said it was the only time he should
fight equal numbers," which if true was alarming in the extreme, con-
sidering all the old fox had been able to accomplish with inferior num-
bers in the past. Another deserter — "from New York state originally;
an intelligent man," Butterfield commented — avowed that Hood's divi-
sion was already with Lee; he knew this, he said, because he had "asked
the troops as they passed along." One of the two informers must be lying,
at least so far as Longstreet's location was concerned. Indeed, both might
be lying; it was not unusual for the Confederates to send out bogus
"deserters" to confuse an opponent with misleading information. But
the fact was, Lee was not reacting to his present predicament at all as he
ought to be doing if he was heavily outnumbered. He was reacting, in
fact, as if the numerical advantage was with him even more than either
deserter claimed. And just what that reaction was Hooker had learned
shortly after Meade and Slocum left him. Until that time, Professor
Lowe's balloons had been fogbound high over Stafford Heights, but all
of a sudden the weather faired, permitting the aeronaut to tap out a
steady flow of information regarding the panorama now spread out be^
fore his eyes. He could see various rebel columns in motion, he wired
Hooker at 1 1 o'clock, but the largest of these was "moving on the road
toward Chancellorsville." This tallied with the intelligence summation
forwarded shortly thereafter by Butterfield. Completing his tabulation
[280] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
of the Confederate order of battle, the chief of staff declared: "Ander-
son, McLaws, A. P. Hill, and Hood would, therefore, be in your front."
It also explained — all too clearly — the sudden clatter of mus-
ketry and the boom of guns, first down the turnpike, then down the
plank road, not long after the two columns set out eastward through
the forest. In part, as well, it accounted for Hooker's reaction, which in
effect was a surrendering of the initiative to Jackson, who plunged
deeper into the Wilderness in pursuit. But there was a good deal more to
it than this: a good deal more that was no less valid for being less specific.
Perhaps Hooker at last had recalled Lincoln's admonition, "Beware of
rashness." Perhaps at this critical juncture he missed the artificial stimu-
lus of whiskey, which formerly had been part of his daily ration but
which he had abjured on taking command. Perhaps he mistrusted his
already considerable accomplishment in putting more than 70,000 sol-
diers in Lee's immediate rear, with practically no losses because he had
met practically no resistance. It had been altogether too easy; Lee must
have wanted him where he was, or at any rate where he had been headed
before he called a halt and ordered a pull-back. Or perhaps it was even
simpler than that. Perhaps he was badly frightened (not physically
frightened: Hooker was never that: but morally frightened) after the
manner of the bullfighter Gallo, who, according to Hemingway, "was
the inventor of refusing to kill the bull if the bull looked at him in a
certain way." This Gallo had a long career, featuring many farewell
performances, and at the first of these, having fought the animal bravely
and well, when the time came for killing he faced the stands and made
three eloquent speeches of dedication to three distinguished aficionados;
after which he turned, sword in hand, and approached the bull, which
was standing there, head down, looking at him. Gallo returned to the
barrera. "You take him, Paco," he told a fellow matador; "I don't like
the way he looks at me." So it was with Hooker, perhaps, when he heard
that Lee had turned in his direction and was, so to speak, looking at him.
Lowe had signaled at noon that the rebels were "considerably diminished"
on the heights behind Fredericksburg. Consequently, at 2 o'clock, Fight-
ing Joe wired Butterfield: "From character of information have sus-
pended attack. The enemy may attack me — I will try it. Tell Sedgwick
to keep a sharp lookout, and attack if can succeed." In effect, now that
Lee had turned his attention westward, Hooker was telling Sedgwick:
"You take him, Paco. I don't like the way he looks at me."
None of this perturbation showed in his manner, however, when
the returning generals confronted him at the Chancellor house, which he
had taken over as his headquarters. "It's all right, Couch; I've got Lee
just where I want him," he said expansively. "He must fight me on my
own ground." Couch had a cold eye for this blusterous performance.
"The retrograde movement had prepared me for something of the
kind," he wrote years later, "but to hear from his own lips that the ad-
Death of a Soldier [ 281 ]
vantages gained by the successive marches of his lieutenants were to cul-
minate in fighting a defensive battle in that nest of thickets was too
much. ... I retired from his presence with the belief that my command-
ing general was a whipped man."
Whether or not this was the case remained to be seen. For the
present, the order was for the army to intrench itself along lines pre-
scribed with the usual attention to detail. On the map they resembled a
double-handled dipper. Couch and Slocum, with two divisions each in
the vicinity of Chancellorsville — Gibbon had stayed at Falmouth
after all — formed the cup, bulging south of the crossroads to include
some comparatively high ground known as Fairview. The cup was just
over a mile wide at the rim, tapering slightly toward the base, and just
under a mile deep. Sickles' three divisions were in reserve, poised for a
leap into the cup or a quick march out either of the handles, which were
between two and three miles long and extended generally northeast and
due west. Meade's three divisions connected the eastern lip of the cup
with the Rappahannock, his left resting on a bend of the river south of
U. S. Ford, which thus was covered. Howard's three divisions, the dip-
per's western handle, extended out the turnpike past Wilderness Church,
where the plank road came in from the southwest, and thus presumably
could block the approach of an enemy moving up from that direction.
The troops worked into the night with picks and shovels, intrenching
the six-mile line from flank to flank. At 2 a.m. Couch, Slocum, and How-
ard reported themselves satisfied that their respective sectors could be
held against assault. Advantageously disposed along Mineral Spring
Run, a small boggy creek that covered his front and rendered his posi-
tion doubly secure, Meade had reported the same thing earlier. Hooker,
with his accustomed thoroughness, seemed to have allowed for all even-
tualities before he retired to a bedroom in the crossroads mansion to
sleep and store up strength for whatever tomorrow was going to bring.
He hoped it would bring an all-out Confederate attack; or so at
least he had been saying, all afternoon and evening. "The rebel army is
now the legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac," he an-
nounced to the officers gathered about him in the May Day sunshine on
the Chancellor veranda. The fact that nearly all of his cavalry had rid-
den well beyond his reach, while nearly all of Lee's was in what Hooker
called "my immediate presence," did not seem to him a cause for alarm,
but rather an advantage, "which I trust will enable Stoneman to do a
land-office business in the interior. I think the enemy in his desperation
will be compelled to attack me on my own ground. ... I am all right."
Thus he wired the Washington authorities, thinking that such informa-
tion, besides relieving the President's concern, might "have an impor-
tant bearing on movements elsewhere." If the other Union armies would
only keep step with this one, the war would soon be over and done with
— won. As the daylight hours wore on and his intrenchments were ex-
[282] THE CIVIL WAR»" 1863
tended, still with no full-scale rebel assault, his show of confidence
reached its zenith. He feared nothing and he wanted it known; not even
the artillery of heaven. "The enemy is in my power," he exulted, "and
God Almighty cannot deprive me of them." In the late afternoon he is-
sued another circular for the encouragement of subordinates: "The ma-
jor general commanding trusts that a suspension in the attack today will
embolden the enemy to attack him."
X 5 X
Lee and Jackson met at sundown, on the plank road just over a mile
southeast of Chancellorsville, for the purpose of deciding how best to go
about giving Hooker what he claimed he wanted. They began their con-
ference on the road itself, at the junction where a trail came in from
Catharine Furnace, a rural ironworks on Lewis Creek a mile and a half
to the west, but they withdrew presently into a nearby clump of pines
when a Federal sharpshooter began ranging in on them from a perch in
a tree just up the road, beyond the line along which Anderson's and
Slocum's pickets were keeping up a rackety contention. Seated side by
side on a log, the two men continued their discussion in the May Day
twilight, the gray-bearded elder impeccably dressed as always, his neat
gray tunic devoid of trappings except for the three unwreathed stars on
each side of the turned-down collar, and the younger wearing the
rather gaudy uniform which had provoked such hoots and catcalls on
the day of Fredericksburg. Reconnoitering on the right this afternoon,
Lee had found the terrain unpromising, hemmed in as it was by a bend of
the Rappahannock, and the few heavily wooded approaches well
guarded by troops already dug in along the far side of a marsh. To at-
tempt to come to grips with them in that quarter, he said, would be to
invite destruction. How about the center and the left? Jackson had not
been far to the west, but he had made a long-range examination of the
enemy lines in front of Chancellorsville itself and had found the blue-
coats disposed three-deep, hard at work with picks and shovels, and sup-
ported by many batteries of artillery. However, he was inclined to be-
lieve that the question of how to get at Hooker, here in the Wilderness
tomorrow, was largely academic. The ease with which he had repulsed
the advancing Union columns today made him suspect that their recoil
was prelude to a withdrawal. "By tomorrow morning there will not be
any of them on this side of the river," he declared.
Lee shook his head. So far he had deferred to Stonewall's judg-
ment, but not in this. Though he too was puzzled by his opponent's sud-
den, turtle-like reaction to moderate pressure, he was convinced that
Hooker was planning to make his main effort right here. Anyhow, even
if that were not the case, they must prepare to deal with him tomorrow
Death of a Soldier [ 283 ]
on even the outside chance that he would still be in his present in-
trenched position. Without quite giving over his belief that dawn would
show the forest empty to their front, Jackson could not disagree with
the logic of Lee's contention; besides which, he found the prospect so at-
tractive as to overrule his inclination to think that it would not be of-
fered. For him, as for his commander, to "deal with" Hooker meant to
attack him. But how? And where? One possibility was that the Federal
center might not appear as stout to a close-up view as it had seemed from
a distance. The two generals accordingly dispatched an engineer officer
from each of their staffs to go take a look at the intrenchments there and
report on what they saw.
While this night reconnaissance was in progress, and while Lee
and Jackson continued to speculate on ways of bringing the blue
army's current excursion to a violent close, Jeb Stuart came jingling up
from Catharine Furnace in fulfillment of his promise to "help all I can
when the ball opens." Glad as he was to see his friend Stonewall decked
out in the handsome uniform he had given him, he deferred comment in
favor of some interesting information which had just come to hand. Ac-
cording to Fitzhugh Lee, who had ridden west to scout it, Hooker's
right flank was "in the air" on the Orange Turnpike, wide open to attack
from that direction. Though this was news of a kind to set both him and
his chief lieutenant on tremble, the southern commander suppressed his
excitement to ask whether roads were available for a covered approach
to that critical point by troops in large numbers. Stuart replied that he
did not know but he would do what he could to find out, and with that
he swung back onto his horse and rode off westward, his red-lined cape
and cinnamon whiskers glistening in the light of the new-risen moon.
From this time on, Lee and Jackson gave little attention to any-
thing but the possibility of launching the suggested flank attack. When
the two engineers returned to announce that the Union center was too
strongly intrenched to be assaulted, Lee received the anticlimactic re-
port with a nod and kept peering at a map spread on his knees; he peered
so intently, indeed, that he seemed to be trying to make it give him in-
formation which it did not contain. "How can we get at those people?"
he asked, half to himself and half to Jackson, who replied in an equally
distracted manner, as he too searched the map for roads that were not
on it: "You know best. Show me what to do, and we will do it." Fi-
nally, Lee traced a fingertip westward along the map from their present
location, as if to sketch in an ideal route past the front of the enemy posi-
tion, then northward to intersect the turnpike, where the latter veered
abruptly east to address the Union flank end-on. In naval parlance, he was
crossing Hooker's T. That would be the movement, he said; Jackson
would lead it and Stuart would cover his march. Smiling, Jackson stood
erect and saluted. "My troops will move at 4 o'clock," he said. In his
eagerness, he not only seemed unable to remain seated, he also seemed to
[284] THE CIVIL WAR3T1863
have forgotten his prediction that Hooker would clear out before
sunup. Lee checked him with a reminder. If there was any doubt about
this next morning, he said, Jackson could open from an exposed posi-
tion with a couple of guns, then judge by the response as to whether the
blue army was still behind its Wilderness fortifications.
There was much to be done between now and sunrise: especially
by Jackson, to whom Lee had left the choice of a route, the composition
of the force to be employed, and the decision as to when and in what
manner the flank attack would be delivered. But what both men needed
for the present, at the close of a strenuous day and on the eve of what
promised to be an even more strenuous morrow, was a few hours' sleep:
again especially Jackson, who had demonstrated on several occasions —
the Seven Days, for one — that without at least a minimum of profound
rest he would be reduced to a state of somnambulism. They lay down
where they were, in separate quarters of the grove, spreading their sad-
dle blankets on the pine needles for a bed and using their saddles for a
pillow. Both were soon asleep, but Lee was wakened presently by an
officer he had sent to look into conditions on the turnpike to the north.
"Ah, Captain, you have returned, have you?" he said, and he sat up
slowly. "Come here and tell me what you have learned on the right."
It was the same young man from Jackson's staff who had wakened him
two mornings ago to tell him Hooker was crossing; J. P. Smith was his
name, a divinity student before the war. He hesitated, in awe of the
general whose massive features and gray beard looked so imposing in
the moonlight, but as he leaned forward the seated man put an arm about
his shoulder and drew him down by his side while he finished his report.
Lee thanked him and then, still retaining his grip, began to chide him by
saying that he regretted that Smith and the other "young men about
General Jackson" had not done a better job today of locating and si-
lencing an enemy battery that had held up the advance. Young men
nowadays, he declared in the accents of Nestor, were a far remove
from the young men of his youth. The captain, seeing, as he later said,
that the general "was jesting and disposed to rally me," broke away
from the hold Lee tried to retain on his shoulder. As he moved off
through the moonlit pines he could hear the Virginian laughing heartily
there in the Wilderness where many men now sleeping would be laid
in their graves tomorrow and the next day and the next, blue and gray
alike, as a result of instructions he had given just before he himself lay
down, in apparently excellent spirits, to rest for what he knew was com-
ing with the dawn.
When Lee woke he saw the gaunt figure of Jackson bending over
a small fire a courier had built. Rising, he joined him and the two sat on
a couple of hardtack boxes the Federals had left behind the day before.
It was already past 4 o'clock, the hour set for the column to move out,
but Jackson explained that he was awaiting the return of his staff chap-
Death of a Soldier [ 285 ]
lain, who once had had a church hereabouts and was familiar with the
region. For this reason he had sent him, together with a skilled cartogra-
pher, to explore the roads leading west from Catharine Furnace and
then north to the plank road, up which he expected to make his strike.
The two sat talking, warming their hands at the meager fire, until the
glimmer of dawn showed the staff officers returning from their scout.
Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, the cartographer, approached the generals and
spread his map on another hardtack box which he placed between them.
It was obvious from his manner, before he said a word, that he had found
the route he had been seeking, and as he spoke he traced it on the map:
first due west to the furnace, then due south, away from the enemy,
along a trail that gradually turned back west to enter the Brock Road,
which ran northward to the plank road and the turnpike. However,
he explained that the column must not turn north at this point, since that
would bring it within sight of a Federal signal station at Fairview, but
south again for a short distance to another road leading north and paral-
leling the Brock Road, which it rejoined a couple of miles above in
some heavy woods just short of its junction with the plank road. That
way, practically the entire route — some ten miles in length from
their present position and firm enough throughout to support wagons
and artillery — would be screened from the eyes of enemy lookouts.
Completing his exposition, Hotchkiss looked from one to another of the
generals, both of whom kept their eyes fixed on the map for what
seemed to him an inordinately long time. Finally Lee spoke, raising his
head to look at his lieutenant: "General Jackson, what do you propose to
do?" Jackson put out his hand and retraced, with a semicircular motion
of his wrist, the route just drawn. "Go around here," he said. Lee kept
looking at him. "What do you propose to make this movement with?"
he asked, and Jackson promptly replied: "With my whole corps."
Now there was a pause while Lee absorbed the shock the words
had given him. "What will you leave me?" he asked. The question was
rhetorical; he already knew the answer. But Jackson answered it any-
how, as readily as before. "The divisions of Anderson and McLaws."
This meant that he would have better than 30,000 soldiers off to the
rear and on the flank, necessarily out of contact with the enemy and the
rest of his own army for most of the day, while Lee would be left with
scarcely half as many troops planted squarely across the path of a greatly
superior blue host which might resume its forward movement at any
minute. However, having weighed the odds — which had to include the
by no means improbable chance that Hooker might learn what was afoot
and react accordingly — the southern commander made and announced
his decision. "Well, go on," he said.
While they talked the sun had reddened the east, and now it
broke clear, fiery above the treetops back toward Fredericksburg, where
Early was facing odds almost as long as Lee's would be when the flanking
[286] THE CIVIL WAR^"1863
column left. Jackson informed his chief that the march would be led by
D. H. Hill's old division, now under Brigadier General Robert Rodes;
next would come his own old division, commanded by its senior briga-
dier, Raleigh Colston; A. P. Hill's division would bring up the rear. He
would take all his artillery with him, dispersed along the column, and
depend on Stuart to cover his advance. Lee took notes on this, then re-
tired to write the necessary orders while his lieutenant went about mak-
ing preparations to move out. As Jackson rode past one brigade camp the
lounging veterans rose to cheer him, but seeing what one of them later
called "battle in his haste and stern looks," they merely gazed at him
and wondered what exertion he was about to require of them. The
preliminary dispositions were a time-consuming business, involving the
extraction of some units already committed, but at last they were com-
pleted. Shortly before 8 o'clock, the lead regiment — Georgians who
had fought under him in every battle since McDowell, the prologue to
the Valley Campaign, which had opened exactly a year ago today with
his descent through Brown's Gap to put his troops aboard the cars for
Staunton — turned off the plank road and set out westward for Catha-
rine Furnace and Hooker's right. Though he was four hours behind the
starting time he had set the night before, Stonewall did not appear to be
disturbed by the delay. He was alert but not impatient, one observer re-
marked, and spoke tersely "as though all were distinctly formed in his
mind and beyond all question." Under the lowered bill of his cap, the
battle light was already shining fiercely in his pale blue eyes.
Lee came up and joined him at the turn-off where the sniper had
tried to draw a bead on them at sunset. Both mounted — Lee on Trav-
eller, a tall dapple gray, and Jackson on stocky, ox-eyed Little Sorrel —
they spoke briefly against a background of skirmish fire which had be-
gun to sputter along the two-mile front now occupied exclusively by
Anderson and McLaws, with just over 15,000 troops between them.
Nothing in Lee's manner showed the strain involved in gambling that
his opponent, whether or not he became aware in the meantime of what
was happening in his front and on his flank, would not exploit his five-
to-one numerical advantage by launching an all-out attack — frontal
or otherwise; either would be about equally destructive — before the
widely divided Confederate wings were reunited. Moreover, Lee was
proceeding not only on the assumption that Jackson could gain and
strike the Union flank before the bluecoats recovered from their current
puzzling lethargy, here in the Wilderness or back in front of Marye's
Heights; he was also proceeding on the belief, or at any rate the hope,
that Hooker would be completely unstrung by the explosion on his
right. Nothing less would serve. For if Hooker could absorb and then
recover from the shock, he might still take the offensive against the out-
numbered and divided graybacks to the west and south, or signal east-
ward for an assault upon the thinly held Fredericksburg ridge in Lee's
Death of a Soldier [ 287 ]
immediate rear. This was, in short, the longest gamble of a career which
had been crowded with risks throughout the eleven months since Lee
first took command at Seven Pines. Now, their brief conversation
ended, the two men parted, the elder to stay, the other to go. As they
did so, the dark-bearded younger general raised his arm and pointed
west, in the direction he was headed. Lee nodded, and Stonewall rode
off into the forest, out of sight.
Fighting Joe had been up for hours, conducting a flank-to-flank
inspection of his lines. "How strong! How strong!" he marveled as he
examined the hastily improvised but elaborate fortifications: particu-
larly those out on the right, where so many of the regiments were com-
posed of foreign-born troops who performed such labor with Ger-
manic thoroughness and a meticulous attention to detail rivaling
Hooker's own. Wherever he went this morning, tall in the saddle and
rosy-looking, flushed with confidence and trailing a kite-tail of staff
officers behind his big white high-stepping horse, the soldiers cheered
him lustily, delighted to see their commander sharing with them the
rigors of the field. His mood was as expansive as before; more so, in
fact; and with cause. For he had received, the night before, a report from
a trusted operative just in from Richmond, who not only had docu-
mentary evidence that Lee was receiving barely 59,000 daily rations,
but also reported that the southern commander could hope for no rein-
forcements except from Longstreet, both of whose divisions — despite
the contrary fabrications passed on by yesterday's rebel deserters —
were still in front of Suffolk. This last was confirmed by Peck himself,
who wired that he had taken prisoners from Hood and Pickett that
same day. In reaction, Hooker's last move before retiring had been to
direct that Reynolds' corps be detached from Sedgwick and sent to
join him here at Chancellorsville. When it arrived — as it should do be-
fore long, the summons having been issued at 1.55 this morning — he
would have better than 90,000 men on hand to repulse the attack Lee
seemed to be preparing to deliver against the bulging center of the
Union line. If the old fox really believed what he was rumored to have
said the day before, that this "was the only time he should fight equal
numbers," he was in for a large surprise. What Fighting Joe was plan-
ning was Fredericksburg in reverse, with Lee in the role of Burnside,
and himself in the role of Lee: except that this time, when the attackers
were exhausted and bled white as a result of their attempts to storm his
fortifications, he would be in a position to swing over to the offensive
that had been impossible for the Confederates, back in December, be-
cause of their numerical inferiority and the guns on Stafford Heights.
Hereabouts there were no heights for Lee to mass his guns on, only the
blinding and restricting thickets, and Hooker had men aplenty for the
delivery of an all-out counterattack and the administration of the
THE CIVIL WAR^" 1863
tACKSONS'Vx
windup coup de grace which would end the final spasmodic twitch of
the dying rebel army.
He was in excellent spirits when he got back to headquarters at
9 o'clock to find a courier waiting for him from Brigadier General David
Birney, commander of a division Sickles had sent out to some unoccu-
pied high ground southwest of Fairview — Hazel Grove, it was called
on the map — for a look at what the graybacks might be up to. Accord-
ing to the information brought back by the courier, they were up to a
great deal. Hazel Grove afforded a clear but limited view of Catharine
Furnace, less than one mile south, and the advancing bluecoats had
spotted a rebel column moving due south of there along a stretch of
road that disappeared into the woods. Apparently endless, the column
included infantry, artillery, wagons, and ambulances; Birney thought it
must signify an important development in the enemy's plans. Hooker
agreed. In fact, after referring to his map, which showed that the road
in question veered west beyond the screen of trees, he believed he knew
just what that development was. The Confederates were in retreat,
probably on Gordonsville, where Stoneman must have struck by now,
severing one of their two main supply lines. However, on the off-chance
Death of a Soldier [ 289 ]
that Lee was attempting at this late date to come up with something out
of his bag of tricks, Hooker decided it would be wise to warn Howard
of what was going on, and he sent him a message advising him to be
vigilant in protecting the western flank: "We have good reason to sup-
pose that the enemy is moving to our right. Please advance your pickets
for purposes of observation as far as may be safe to obtain timely in-
formation of their approach." He might have followed to see for him-
self that his instructions were carried out, but presently a dispatch ar-
rived from Howard, sent before his own had been received, stating that
he too had sighted the rebel column "moving westward on a road par-
allel with this," and adding, of his own accord: "I am taking measures to
resist an attack from the west." It was clear that Howard required no
supervision to assure that he did his duty; he had performed it before
he was even told what it was, thereby leaving Hooker free to concen-
trate on the question of pursuit.
In this connection he thought again of Sedgwick, who had been
kept by a faulty telegraph connection from getting yesterday's instruc-
tions until the hour was too late for an attack. First Sickles and now
Reynolds had been detached from the downstream force, but Sedg-
wick's was the largest corps in the army. With Gibbon's division still
available at Falmouth, he had close to 30,000 effectives, plus the support
of the long-range guns on Stafford Heights, and though Professor Lowe
had reported earlier that a hard wind was bumping him around so much
he could not use his telescope, the headquarters intelligence section in-
formed Hooker that only Early's division remained on the Fredericks-
burg ridge. Accordingly, he directed Butterfield to pass the word along
to Sedgwick and authorize him to attack if there was "a reasonable ex-
pectation of success." Meanwhile Hooker kept his staff busy preparing
orders designed to put the whole army on Lee's trail if he still appeared
to be in retreat next morning. A circular issued at 2.30 instructed corps
commanders to load up with forage, provisions, and ammunition so as
"to be ready to start at an early hour tomorrow." By the time this was
distributed, reports had begun to come in from Sickles, who had been
given permission at noon to advance with two divisions to investigate
the movement Birney had spotted from Hazel Grove. He sent back
word that he had pierced the rebel column near Catharine Furnace, cap-
turing men and wagons, but that practically all of it had moved west-
ward beyond his reach by now. Hooker took fire at this, his confidence
soaring: Lee was unquestionably in full retreat, intending to follow the
heavily escorted train with the Confederate main body. At 4.30 the jubi-
lant Federal commander wired Butterfield to order Sedgwick to throw
his entire force across the river, "capture Fredericksburg and everything
in it, and vigorously pursue the enemy." Previous instructions had
been discretionary, and so were these; but Hooker made it clear that a
[290] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
fine opportunity lay before him. "We know that the enemy is fleeing,
trying to save his trains," he added. "Two of Sickles' divisions are among
them."
As might have been expected with the rebel column filing
through the woods to the army's front, there was a good deal of excite-
ment along the outpost lines. Couriers and even unit commanders began
to turn up at the Chancellor house with frantic, sometimes near-
hysterical warnings of an impending flank attack. Staff officers had all
they could do to keep some of them — especially one persistent artil-
leryman with the lowly rank of captain, who claimed to have ridden out
and seen the graybacks massing — from bothering Hooker himself with
their perturbations. When these men finally could be made to understand
that the high command was already aware of the alleged danger and had
taken steps to meet it in case it developed, they returned to their units,
most of them feeling rather sheepish at having presumed to believe they
knew more than their superiors. Others, however, remained uncon-
vinced: particularly those through whose ranks the rebel prisoners had
been taken rearward after their capture near Catharine Furnace. They
were Georgians, hale-looking men in neat butternut clothes, and for the
most part they seemed cheerful enough, considering their plight. They
had come over, they replied to taunts, to help "eat up them eight-day ra-
tions." But some were surly and in no mood to be chided. Told by a blue-
coat, "We'll have every mother's son of you before we go away," one
snapped back: "You'll catch hell before night." Another was more spe-
cific as to how calamity was to be visited upon them, and by whom.
"You think you've done a big thing just now," he said, "but wait till
Jackson gets around on your flank." This seemed to its hearers well
worth passing on to headquarters, but when they went there to report it
they were told to return to their outfits; Lee was in retreat, no matter
what the butternut captives said, and Hooker was making plans even
now for an orderly pursuit.
Far out on the right flank, as the shadows lengthened toward 5
o'clock and beyond, Howard's men were taking it easy. They had seen no
action so far in the campaign, but that was much as usual; they had seen
little real action anywhere in the war, save for a great deal of march-
ing and countermarching, and were in fact a sort of stepchild corps,
collectively referred to by the rest of the army as "a bunch of Dutch-
men." Indeed, nothing demonstrated more conclusively Hooker's lack of
concern for his western flank than the fact that he had posted these men
here. Mostly New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians, large numbers of them
were immigrants, lately arrived and scarcely able to speak English;
"Hessians," their enemies called them, with a contempt dating back to
the days of the Revolution. Schurz, Steinwehr, and Schimmelfennig
were three of their generals, while their colonels had names such as Von
Death of a Soldier [ 291 ]
Gilsa, Krzyzanowski, Einsiedel, Dachrodt, and Schluemback. Howard
himself was by no means popular with them, despite his sacrifice of an
arm to the cause and a record of steady progress up the ladder of com-
mand. After his maiming, a year ago at Fair Oaks, he had returned to
lead a brigade at Antietam and a division at Fredericksburg, both with
such distinction that now — to the considerable displeasure of men
whose proudest boast had been "I fights mit Sigel" and who rather il-
logically put the blame for their hero's departure on his successor — he
had a corps. He had had it, in fact, exactly a month today; but \n his
anxiety to make good he not only had borne down hard on discipline,
he also had tried to influence the out-of-hours activities of his troops by
distributing religious tracts among them. The latter action was resented
even more than the former, for many of the men were freethinkers,
lately emerged from countries where the church had played a consid-
erable part in attempting their oppression, and they drew the line
somewhere short of being preached at, prayed over, or uplifted. The
result of all this, and more, was that army life was not a happy one for
them or their commander, whose ill-concealed disappointment at their
reaction to his attempt to play the role of Christian Soldier only served
to increase their mistrust and dislike of him, empty sleeve and all.
Today was one of the better days, however, with a minimum of
work, no drill whatsoever, and a maximum of rest. Extended for more
than a mile along the turnpike west of Dowdall's Tavern, an oversized
cabin just east of the junction where the plank road came in from the
southwest, they lounged behind the elaborate southward-facing breast-
works Hooker himself had admired. Like his chief, Howard was con-
vinced that he was onto the rebel strategy, which seemed to him to
be designed to cover a retreat with a pretense of strength and boldness.
He too rejected various cries of wolf, including those from an outpost
major who sent back a stream of frantic messages from beyond the
flank, all patterned after the first at 2.45: "A large body of the enemy is
massing in my front. For God's sake make disposition to receive him!"
At the outer end of the intrenched line, two guns were posted hub-to-
hub on the pike itself, facing west, and two regiments of infantry — not
over 900 men in all — were disposed at right angles to the road, strung
out northward from the point where the guns were posted. These two
regiments and guns were all the flank protection Howard had provided
after notifying Hooker that he was "taking measures to resist an attack
from the west," but he considered them ample, since nothing could ap-
proach him from that direction except along the turnpike, covered by
the two guns, or through a tangle of second-growth timber and briery
underbrush which he had pronounced impenetrable. Moreover, there
was a half-mile stretch of unoccupied ground between his left and Slo-
cum's right, marking the former position of his one reserve brigade,
which had been detached in the midafternoon and still had not returned
[ 292 ] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
from its mission of guarding Sickles' flank in the course of his advance
from Hazel Grove. This gap was critical. Though it went unnoticed, or
at any rate unfilled, it meant that if anything struck Howard a hard
enough blow from the west, he would be in much the same predicament
as a man attempting to sit on a chair he did not know had been re-
moved.
That, or something like that, was what happened. Not long after
5 o'clock, with some regiments already eating supper and others loung-
ing about while waiting for it, their rifles neatly stacked, the troops at
the far end of the line were alarmed and then amused to see large num-
bers of deer break out of the thickets to the west and come bounding
toward them, accompanied by droves of rabbits darting this way and
that in the underbrush, as if pursued by invisible beaters. The men
cheered and hallooed, waving their caps at the startled forest creatures,
until presently something else they heard and saw froze the laughter
in their throats. Long lines of men in gray and butternut, their clothes
ripped to tatters by the briers and branches, were running toward
them through the "impenetrable" thickets. They were screaming as they
came on, jaws agape, and their bayonets caught angry glints from the
low-angled sun pouring its beams through the reddened treetops and
over their shoulders.
For all its explosive force, its practically complete surprise, and
its rapid gathering of momentum, Stonewall's flank attack was launched
with only about two hours of daylight left for the accomplishment of
the destruction he intended. One of the two main reasons for this tardi-
ness was that the start itself had been late, and the other was that the
finish was delayed by an extension of the march. Between these two un-
toward extremes, however, all went smoothly, despite attempted enemy
interruptions. The roads, described by one of the marchers as "just wet
enough to be easy to the feet and free from dust," were narrow but
firm, so that the column was elongated but its progress was not im-
peded. Like his men, who were enthused by a sense of adventure before
they had even had time to guess what the adventure was going to be,
Jackson was in excellent spirits, and though he did not push them to the
limit of their endurance as he had done so often in the past, being con-
cerned for once to conserve their energy for the work that lay ahead, he
took care to deal with emergencies in a manner that would not hold
up the main body. For instance, when the head of the column came un-
der fire from a section of guns just north of Catharine Furnace, he de-
tached the lead regiment of Georgians, with instructions for them to
block a possible infantry probe at that point, and had the remaining units
double-time across the clearing, being willing to suffer whatever in-
cidental losses this involved rather than to burn more daylight by taking
Death of a Soldier [ 293 ]
a roundabout route. Similarly A. P. Hill, whose division did not clear the
starting point until well after 1 1 o'clock, dropped off his two rear bri-
gades to assist the hard-pressed Georgians — forty of them had been
captured and most of the rest were about to be captured — in fending
off an infantry attack launched by the Federals just as he was approach-
ing the furnace about noon, and forged ahead with his other four
brigades. Far in the lead and quite unmindful of his rear, which he left
to look out for itself after making the original provision, Jackson kept
the main body on the go. "Press forward. Press forward," he urged his
subordinate commanders. Including 1500 attached cavalry and 2000 ar-
tillerymen in support of his 70 regiments of infantry, Stonewall had bet-
ter than 31,000 effectives in the column, and his only regret was that
he did not have more. "I hear it said that General Hooker has more men
than he can handle," he remarked in the course of the march. "I should
like to have half as many more as I have today, and I should hurl him
into the river!"
His eyes glowed at the thought, and presently they had occasion
to blaze even more fiercely, not only at a thought, but also at what was
actually spread before them. About 2 o'clock, as he approached the
Orange Plank Road — the intended objective, up which he expected to
turn the column northeastward for an attack that would strike the
Orange Turnpike just west of Dowdall's Tavern, where Hooker's flank
presumably was anchored — he was met by Fitz Lee, who approached
from the opposite direction, drew rein alongside Little Sorrel, and an-
nounced with a barely suppressed excitement that explained his lack of
ceremony: "General, if you will ride with me, halting your column here
out of sight, I will show you the enemy's right." The two officers, ac-
companied by a single courier so as not to increase the risk of detection,
rode past the plank road intersection, then turned off eastward through
the trees to a little hill which they climbed on horseback. From the
summit, parting the curtain of leaves, Stonewall saw what had provoked
the excitement Lee would still be feeling, years later, when he came to
write about it: "What a sight presented itself before me! Below, and
but a few hundred yards distant, ran the Federal line of battle . . . with
abatis in front and long lines of stacked arms in the rear. Two cannon
were visible in the part of the line seen. The soldiers were in groups in
the rear, laughing, smoking, probably engaged, here and there, in games
of cards and other amusements indulged in while feeling safe and com-
fortable, awaiting orders. In rear of them were other parties driving up
and butchering beeves." As he observed the peaceful scene, Jackson's
mind was on a different kind of butchery. According to Lee, "his eyes
burned with a brilliant glow, lighting his sad face. His expression was
one of intense interest; his face was colored slightly with the paint of
the approaching battle, and radiant in the success of his flank move-
ment."
[294] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
The salient fact was that Hooker's flank was as completely "in
the air" as had been reported the night before, but that an attack up the
plank road, such as had been intended, would strike it at an angle, about
midway, rather than end-on; which would not do. Correction of this,
however, called for a two-mile extension of the march in order to get
beyond the farthest western reach of the Union intrenchments and ap-
proach them on the perpendicular. That meant a further delay of at
least an hour, to which of course would be added the time required to
form the three divisions for assault. With the sun already well past the
overhead — by now, in fact, the hands of his watch were crowding 2.30
— there might not be enough daylight left for the execution of his
plans. But Jackson did not hesitate beyond the few minutes it took him
to make a careful examination of what was spread before his eyes. See-
ing his lips moving as he looked at the enemy soldiers down below, Lee
assumed that he was praying. If this was so, there was no evidence of it
in his voice as he turned to the courier and snapped out an order for him
to take back to the head of the column, halted on the Brock Road to
await instructions: "Tell General Rodes to move across the plank road,
halt when he gets to the old turnpike, and I will join him there."
The courier took off. Jackson turned for a final look at the lounging
bluecoats, disposed as they were for slaughter, then "rode rapidly
[back] down the hill, his arms flapping to the motion of his horse, over
whose head it seemed, good rider as he was, he would certainly go." Lee
saw him thus; then he too turned and followed, somewhat chagrined that
he had not received the thanks he had expected in return for making a
discovery which not only would save many Confederate lives but also
had made possible what gave promise of being the most brilliant tactical
stroke of Stonewall's career.
Jackson had already forgotten him, along with practically every-
thing else preceding the moment when his mind became fixed on what
he was going to do. Retracing his horse's steps back down the Brock
Road he passed Rodes, who had his men slogging northward for the
turnpike, and returned to the plank road intersection, where he met and
detached Colston's lead brigade — his own old First Manassas outfit,
the Stonewall Brigade — to advance a short distance up the plank road
and take position at a junction where the road from Germanna Ford
came in from the northwest. With his rear and right flank thus screened
and protected, he took a moment to scrawl a note briefly explaining the
situation to Lee, who he knew must be fretting at the delay. "I hope as
soon as practicable to attack," he wrote, and added: "I trust that an
ever kind Providence will bless us with great success." The note was
headed, "Near 3 p.m."; time was going fast. He hurried northward to
the turnpike, overtook Rodes, and gave him the instructions he had
promised. Rodes accordingly moved eastward on the pike for about a
mile — unopposed and apparently unobserved, although this brought
Death of a Soldier [ 295 ]
him within 1000 yards of the western knuckle of Howard's intrench-
ments — then formed his division along a low, north-south ridge. Four
brigades were in line, two to the right and two to the left, extending
about a mile in each direction from the turnpike, which would be the
guide for the assault. The fifth brigade took position behind the extreme
right, and Colston's remaining three brigades prolonged this second line
northward, 200 yards in rear of the first. Jackson's orders were that the
charge would be headlong. Under no circumstances was there to be even
a pause in the advance. If a first-line brigade ran into trouble, it was to
call for help from the brigade in its immediate rear, without taking time
to notify either division commander. The main thing, he emphasized as
he spoke to his subordinates in turn, was to keep rolling, to keep up the
pressure and the scare.
Maneuvering the stretched-out column off the road and into a
compact mass, like a fist clenched for striking, was a time-consuming
business, however, especially when it had to be done in woods so dense
that visibility scarcely extended beyond the limits of a single regiment.
Also there was the problem of fatigue. Though by ordinary standards
the march had been neither long nor hard — an average dozen miles in
an average eight hours — none of the troops had had anything to eat
since breakfast, and many of them had not had even that. Hunger made
them trembly. Moreover, there had been a tormenting shortage of wa-
ter all along the way, and the men were spitting cotton as they filed into
position to await the signal that would send them plunging eastward
through the thickets to their front. They knew now, for certain, what
they had only assumed before: Hooker's flank lay dead ahead and they
were about to strike it. But the waiting was long. It was 4.30 by the time
Colston had formed in rear of Rodes, and Hill was not yet off the road.
Another half hour sufficed to get Little Powell's two leading brigades
into position in rear of Colston's left, while the center two were coming
forward on the turnpike; but the last two were miles back down the
road, delayed by their rear-guard action at Catharine Furnace. Jackson
waited as long as he could, watch in hand. Rodes stood beside him, wait-
ing too; he was a V.M.I, graduate, just past his thirty-fourth birthday,
and like his chief a former professor of mathematics. Tall and slender, a
Virginia-born Alabamian with a tawny mustache that drooped below
the corners of his mouth, he had fought well in almost every major bat-
tle since First Manassas, taking time off only for wounds, but he
would be leading a division in combat for the first time today. At 5. 1 5 —
an hour and a half before sundown — Jackson looked up from his
watch. His proposed third line was not half formed, but he and the sun
could wait no longer.
"Are you ready, General Rodes?"
"Yes sir."
"You can go forward then."
[296] THE CIVIL WAR »* 1863
He spoke calmly, almost matter-of-factly; yet what followed
within the next quarter hour approximated pandemonium. Crashing
through the half-mile screen of brush and stunted trees, whose thorns
and brittle, low-hanging limbs quickly stripped the trail-blazing skir-
mishers near-naked, the long lines of Confederates broke suddenly into
the clear, where the sight of the enemy brought their rifles to their
shoulders and the quavering din of the rebel yell from their throats;
"that hellish yell," one bluecoat called it, though Jackson himself had
once referred to the caterwaul as "the sweetest music I ever heard." He
was getting his fill of such music now. All across the nearly two-mile
width of his front, the woods and fields resounded with it as the scream-
ing attackers bore down on the startled Federals, who had just risen to
whoop at the frightened deer and driven rabbits. Now it was their turn
to be frightened — and driven, too. For the Union regiments facing west
gave way in a rush before the onslaught, and as they fled the two guns
they had abandoned were turned against them, hastening their depar-
ture and increasing the confusion among the troops facing south behind
the now useless breastworks they had constructed with such care. These
last, looking over their shoulders and seeing the fugitives running close-
packed on the turnpike immediately in their rear, took their cue from
them and began to pull out, too, in rapid succession from right to left
down the long line of intrenchments, swelling the throng rushing east-
ward along the road. Within twenty minutes of the opening shots, How-
ard's flank division had gone out of military existence, converted that
quickly from organization to mob. The adjoining division was sudden
to follow the example set. Not even the sight of the corps commander
himself, on horseback near Wilderness Church, breasting the surge of re-
treaters up the turnpike and clamping a stand of abandoned colors un-
der the stump of his amputated arm while attempting to control his
skittish horse with the other, served to end or even slow the rout. Bare-
headed and with tears in his eyes, Howard was pleading with them to
halt and form, halt and form, but they paid him no mind, evidently con-
vinced that his distress, whether for the fate of his country or his
career or both, took no precedence over their own distress for their very
lives. Some in their haste drew knives from their pockets and cut their
knapsack straps as they ran, unburdening themselves for greater speed
without taking the time to fumble at buckles, lest they be overtaken by
the horde of tatterdemalion demons stretching north and south as far
as the eye could follow and screaming with delight at the prospect of
carnage.
Jackson was among the pursuers, riding from point to point just
in rear of the crest of the wave, exultant. "Push right ahead," he told
his brigadiers and colonels, and as he spoke he made a vigorous thrusting
gesture, such as a man would make in toppling a wall. When a jubilant
young officer cried, "They are running too fast for us. We can't keep
Death of a Soldier [ 297 ]
up with them!" he replied sternly: "They never run too fast for me, sir.
Press them, press them!" It was 6.30 by now; the sun was down behind
the rearward treetops. Dowdall's Tavern lay dead ahead, and from the
east the answering thunder of guns and clatter of musketry told Stone-
wall that Lee had heard or learned of the attack and was applying pres-
sure to keep the tottering Union giant off balance, even though he could
scarcely hope to break through the endless curve of fortifications south
and east of Chancellorsville. Here to the west, on the other hand, when-
ever a clump of bluecoats more stalwart than their fellows tried to make
a stand, they found themselves quickly outflanked on the left and right
by the overlapping lines of the attackers, and they had to give way in a
scramble to avoid being surrounded. Every time Jackson heard the
wild yell of victory that followed such collapses he would lift his head
and smile grimly, as if in thanks to the God of battle. Conversely,
whenever he came upon the bodies of his own men, lying where pan-
icky shots had dropped them, he would frown, draw rein briefly, and
raise one hand as if blessing the slain for their valor. A staff officer later
remarked, "I have never seen him so well pleased with the progress and
results of a fight."
On through sundown his pleasure was justified by continuing
success, and presently it was increased. By 7 o'clock, with darkness
settling fast in the clearings and the woods already black, his triumph
over Howard was complete as the Federals gave way around Dowdall's
Tavern and began their flight across the reserveless gap that yawned
between them and the rest of the blue army. On the right, just south
of the turnpike, there was a meeting engagement with a column of
Union cavalry, which resulted in its repulse, and enemy guns were
booming on Fairview Heights, firing blind to discourage pursuit, but
Jackson did not believe there was anything substantial between him and
the loom of forest screening Chancellorsville itself, just over a mile
ahead. The only deterrent beyond his control was the darkness, and
soon there was not even that. As if in response to a signal from the
southern Joshua, the full moon came up, huge and red through the drift-
ing smoke, then brightened to gold as it rose to light the way for pursuit.
Many times in the past Stonewall had ached to launch a night attack;
now he not only had the chance, he believed it was downright neces-
sary if he was to prevent the enemy from recovering from the shock and
attempting to turn the tables on the still-divided Confederates. Two im-
mediate objectives he had in mind. One was to strike deep in Hooker's
rear, cutting him off from U.S. Ford so as to prevent his escape across
the Rappahannock, and the other was to reunite with Lee for a com-
bined assault on the bluecoats who thus would be hemmed in for slaugh-
ter. It was more or less obvious by now that Rodes and Colston had done
their worst, at least for the present; they would need a breathing spell in,
which to regain control of their troops, hopelessly mingled in a single
[298] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
wave that was already ebbing because of exhaustion; but Hill's four bri-
gades were still intact, available as a reserve, and Jackson was determined
to use them for a moonlight advance along the pike and up the roads
leading northeastward to the single river crossing in Hooker's rear. Soon
he found Little Powell and gave him his instructions. There was no stud-
ied calmness about him now, such as there had been three hours ago
when he told Rodes he could go forward. His excitement was evident to
everyone he met, and his sense of urgency was communicated with
every word he spoke, including those in the orders he gave Hill: 'Tress
them! Cut them off from the United States Ford, Hill. Press them!"
Hooker by then was doing all he could to avert disaster, but for
the better part of an hour after the first wave of attackers struck and
crumpled the tip of his western wing — three miles from the Chancellor
gallery where he sat chatting amiably with members of his staff — he
had been under the tactical disadvantage of not even knowing that he
had been surprised. Because of acoustic peculiarities of the terrain and
the cushioning effect of brush and trees, the roar of battle reached him
but faintly and indirectly. He and his aides supposed that the racket, such
as it was, came from down around Catharine Furnace, a couple of miles
to the south, and were exchanging conjectures as to the havoc Sickles
must be making among Lee's trains in that direction. Just before sun-
down, however, one of the officers strolled out to the road and casually
gazed westward. "My God — here they come!" the others heard him
shout. Then they saw for themselves what he meant. A stumbling herd
of wild-eyed men, the frantic and apparently unstoppable backwash of
Howard's unstrung corps, was rushing eastward, filling the pike from
shoulder to shoulder. Fighting Joe reacted fast. At hand was Sickles'
third division — his own in the days before his elevation to corps and
army command — left in reserve when the other two moved south;
Hooker ordered it to wheel right and stem the rout. "Receive them on
your bayonets! Receive them on your bayonets!" he cried, not making
it clear whether he meant the demoralized Dutchmen or the rebels
somewhere in their rear, as he rode westward through the failing light
and into the teeth of the storm.
At Hazel Grove, sealed off from the uproar which by now was
just over a mile away, a regiment of Pennsylvania cavalry received at
about this same time, between sunset and moonrise, orders to join How-
ard near Wilderness Church. With no suggestion of urgency in the mes-
sage and no hint that a clash had occurred, let alone a retreat, the troop-
ers mounted and set out northwestward on a trail too narrow for any-
thing more than a column of twos. They rode at a walk, talking casually
among themselves, their weapons sheathed, until they approached the
turnpike: at which point the major in command barely had time to cry,
"Draw sabers! Charge!" before they ran spang into a whole Confederate
Death of a Soldier [ 299 ]
division moving eastward through darkness that all of a sudden was
stitched with muzzle flashes and filled with yells and twittering bullets.
One side was about as startled as the other. The riders managed to
hack their way out of the melee, though by the time they reassembled
in the moonlight back near Chancellorsville a good many saddles had
been emptied and a number of troopers had been captured, along with
their unmanageable horses.
For blue and gray alike, whether mounted or afoot, the meeting
engagement had some of the qualities of a nightmare too awful to be re-
membered except in unavoidable snatches. But for other Union soldiers,
east of there, such an experience would have been counted almost mild
in comparison with the one they blundered into a few hours later, in
which blue was pitted not only against gray, but also against blue. Down
around Catharine Furnace, deep in enemy territory, Dan Sickles knew
nothing of what had been happening until well past sundown, when he
heard the roar of batteries massed on the heights at Flazel Grove and
Fairview, far in his rear. Informed at last of the enemy flank attack,
which placed his two divisions precariously between the superior halves
of the rebel army and thus exposed him to the danger of being pinched
off and surrounded, he pulled hurriedly back to Hazel Grove — un-
hindered, so far, but by no means out of the trap whose jaws seemed
likely to snap shut at any moment. By now it was past 9 o'clock, and
except for occasional bellows by the 22 guns posted here and the 34 at
Fairview, the firing had died to a mutter. Placing one division on the
left and the other on the right of a trail leading northward through the
forest, Sickles prepared to continue his march to the comparative safety
of the turnpike. He had scarcely set out, however, before the two col-
umns lost the trail and drifted apart, one veering east and the other west,
with the result that they ran into horrendous trouble in both directions.
The division on the left angled into a line of Confederates, alert behind
hastily improvised intrenchments, while the one on the right stumbled
into a similar line along which one of Slocum's divisions was deployed.
Both broke into flames on contact, and a three-sided fight was in progress
as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch. Caught in what a partic-
ipant called "one vast square of fire," Sickles' troops milled aimlessly,
throwing bullets indiscriminately east and west. Shouts of "Don't fire!
We're friends!" brought heavier volleys from both sides of the gauntlet,
and consternation reached a climax when rival batteries started pumping
shell and canister into the frantic mass hemmed thus between the lines.
Somehow, though, despite the darkness and confusion, Sickles finally
managed to effect a withdrawal southward, in the direction he had come
from. By midnight he had what was left of his two divisions back at
Hazel Grove, where the men bedded down to wait for daylight,
barely four hours off, and restore their jangled nerves as best they could.
Elsewhere along his contracted line — albeit the contraction had
[ 3°o ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
been accomplished more by Jackson's efforts than his own — Hooker
saw to it that the rest of his army did likewise. He did not know what
tomorrow was going to bring, but he intended to be ready for it. And
in point of fact he had cause for confidence. Reynolds was over the river
by now; his three divisions were available as a reserve. Even Howard's
three, or anyhow a good part of them, had managed to reassemble in the
vicinity of U.S. Ford, where they were brought to a halt after ricochet-
ing northward off Lee's intrenchments east of Chancellorsville. Meade's
three had been unaffected by the turmoil across the way. Couch and
Slocum, under cover of the 56-gun barrage from Hazel Grove and Fair-
view, had adapted their four divisions to the altered situation, along with
the one Sickles had left behind. Moreover, another brigade of cavalry
was at hand, Averell having been called in from near Rapidan Station,
where Stoneman had dropped him off, ostensibly to check Stuart's pur-
suit but actually, since there was no pursuit, to play little or no part in
the southward raid. His total loss, after three days in enemy country,
was 1 man killed and 4 wounded; Hooker was furious and relieved him
on the spot. "If the enemy did not come to him, he should have gone
to the enemy," Fighting Joe protested with unconscious irony. Appar-
ently he could not see that this applied in his own case. He still de-
pended on Sedgwick for the delivery of any blow that was to be struck,
repeating in greater detail at 9 p.m. the instructions sent him earlier in
the day. This time they were peremptory; Sedgwick was to "cross the
Rappahannock at Fredericksburg on the receipt of this order." Leaving
Gibbon to hold the town, he was to march at once on Chancellors-
ville and "attack and destroy any force he may fall in with on the road."
This would bring him promptly into contact with Lee's rear, "and be-
tween us we will use him up. ... Be sure not to fail." The pattern was
unchanged. Now as before, Gallo-Hooker was leaving the confronta-
tion of the bull to Paco-Sedgwick, while he himself stood fast behind the
barrera to cheer him on.
Lulled by what one insomniac called "the weird, plaintive notes
of the whippoorwills," who would not let even a battle the size of this
one cancel their serenade to the full, high-sailing moon, the army slept.
From point to point the Wilderness was burning — "like a picture of
hell," a cavalryman said of the scene as he viewed it from a hilltop — but
the screams of the wounded caught earlier by the flames had died away,
together with the growl and rumble of the guns. It was midnight and
the Army of the Potomac took its rest.
Though the Army of Northern Virginia was doing the same,
west and south of the now one-handled Union dipper, it did so in an at-
mosphere of tragedy out of all ratio to the success it had scored today.
Not only had Stonewall's plan for continuing the eastward drive by
moonlight been abandoned, but Stonewall himself had been taken rear-
Death of a Soldier [ 301 ]
ward, first on a stretcher and then in an ambulance, to a hospital tent
near Wilderness Tavern, where even now, as midnight came and went,
surgeons were laying out the probes and knives and saws they would use
in their fight to save his life. Intimations of national tragedy, intensified
by a sense of acute personal loss, pervaded the forest bivouacs as the
rumor spread that Jackson had been wounded.
After telling Hill to bring his men forward in order to resume
the stalled pursuit, he had proceeded east along the turnpike in search
of a route that would intercept the expected blue retreat to U.S. Ford.
As he and several members of his staff rode past the fringe of Confeder-
ate pickets, taking a secondary road that branched off through the woods
on the left, they began hearing the sound of axes from up ahead, where
the Federals were trimming and notching logs for a new line of breast-
works. "General, don't you think this is the wrong place for you?" an
officer asked. Jackson did not agree. "The danger is all over," he said.
"The enemy is routed. Go back and tell A. P. Hill to press right on."
Presently, though, with the ring of axes much nearer at hand, he drew
rein and listened carefully. Then he turned and rode back the way he
had come, apparently satisfied that the bluecoats, for all their frenzy of
preparation, would be unable to resist what he intended to throw at
them as soon as Hill got his troops into position. Soon he came upon
Little Powell himself, riding forward with his staff to examine the
ground over which he expected to advance, and the two parties re-
turned together. To the pickets crouched in the brush ahead — North
Carolinians whose apprehensiveness had been aroused by the meeting en-
gagement, a short while ago, with the saber-swinging Pennsylvanians
over on the turnpike — the mounted generals and their staffs, amount-
ing in all to nearly a score of horsemen, must have had the sound of a
troop of Union cavalry on the prowl or the advance element of a wave
of attackers. At any rate that was the premise on which they acted in
opening fire. "Cease firing! Cease firing!" Hill shouted, echoed by one of
Jackson's officers: "Cease firing! You are firing into your own men!"
Fortunately, no one had been hit by the sudden spatter of bullets, but the
Tarheel commander believed he saw through a Yankee trick. "Who gave
that order?" he cried. "It's a lie! Pour it into them, boys!" The boys did
just that. Not only the pickets but the whole front-line battalion opened
fire at twenty paces and with such devastating effect that the bodies of
no less than fourteen horses were counted later in the immediate area.
Little Sorrel was not among them, having returned by then to the
allegiance from which Stonewall had removed him, nearly two years
ago, with his capture at Harpers Ferry. Frightened by the abrupt first
clatter of fire from the pickets crouched in the brush ahead, he whirled
and made a rearward dash through the woods. Jackson managed to turn
him, though he could not slow him down, and was coming back west,
his right arm raised to protect his face from low-hanging branches, when
[302] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
the second volley crashed. Once more Little Sorrel whirled and scam-
pered toward the enemy lines, completely out of control now because
his rider had been struck by three of the bullets, two in the left arm,
which hung useless at his side, and one through the palm of the upraised
hand, which he lowered and used as before, despite the pain, to turn the
fear-crazed animal back toward his own lines. There one of the sur-
viving officers, dismounted by the volley, caught hold of the horse's
bridle and brought him to a stop, while another came up and braced the
general in the saddle. He seemed dazed. "Wild fire, that, sir; wild fire,"
he exclaimed as he sat staring into the darkness lately stitched with muz-
zle flashes. All around them they could hear the groans and screams of
injured men and horses. "How do you feel, General?" one of the officers
asked, with the simplicity of great alarm, and Jackson replied: "You had
better take me down. My arm is broken." They did so, finding him al-
ready so weak from shock and bleeding that he could not lift his feet
from the stirrups. Freed at last of the restraining weight, Little Sorrel
turned and ran for the third time toward the Union lines, and this time
he made it. Meanwhile the two staffers laid the general under a tree.
While one went off in search of a surgeon and the other was doing what
he could to staunch the flow of blood from an artery severed in the left
arm, just below the shoulder, Jackson began muttering to himself, as if
in disbelief of what had happened. "My own men," he said.
That was about 9.30; the next two hours were a restless extension
of the nightmare as Federal batteries at Fairview began firing, the gun-
ners having spotted the moonlit confusion just over half a mile away.
Presently the second of Jackson's two attendant staff officers returned
through the storm of bursting shells with a regimental surgeon, who ad-
ministered first aid and ordered the general taken rearward on a
stretcher. This had to be done under artillery fire so intense that the
bearers were forced to stop and lie flat from time to time, as much for
Jackson's protection as their own. On several such occasions they almost
dropped him, and once they did, hard on the injured arm, which made
him groan with pain for the first time. At last they found an ambu-
lance and got him back to the aid station near Wilderness Tavern, where
his medical director, Dr Hunter McGuire, took one look at "the fixed,
rigid face and the thin lips, so tightly compressed that the impression of
the teeth could be seen through them," and ordered the patient prepared
for surgery. "What an infinite blessing . . . blessing . . . blessing," Stone-
wall murmured as the chloroform blurred his pain. Then McGuire re-
moved the shattered left arm, all but a two-inch stump. Coming out of
the anesthetic, half an hour later — it was now about 3 o'clock in the
morning — Jackson said that during the operation he had experienced
"the most delightful music," which he now supposed had been the sing-
ing of the bone-saw. At that point, however, he was interrupted by a
staff officer just arrived from the front. Tragedy had succeeded tragedy.
Death of a Soldier [ 303 ]
Hill had been incapacitated, struck in both legs by shell fragments, and
had called on Jeb Stuart to take command instead of Rodes, the senior
infantry brigadier, who until today had never led anything larger than a
brigade. Stuart had come at a gallop from Ely's Ford, altogether willing.
Knowing little of the situation and almost nothing of Stonewall's plans,
however, he had sent to him for instructions or advice. Jackson stirred,
contracting his brow at the effort. For a moment the light of battle re-
turned to his eyes. Then it faded; his face relaxed. Even the exertion of
thought was too much for him in his weakened condition. "I don't know
— I can't tell," he stammered. "Say to General Stuart he must do what
he thinks best."
Stuart would do that anyhow, of course, and so would Lee, who
was informed at about this same time of the progress of the flank attack
and the climactic wounding of his chief lieutenant. "Ah, Captain," he
said; he shook his head; "Any victory is dearly bought which deprives
us of the services of General Jackson, even for a short time." When the
officer started to give him further details of the accident Lee stopped
him. "Ah, don't talk about it. Thank God it is no worse." He was quick
to agree, however, when the young man expressed the opinion that it
had been Stonewall's intention to continue the attack. "Those people
must be pressed today," Lee said decisively, and he put this into more
formal language at once in a note to Stuart: "It is necessary that the
glorious victory thus far achieved be prosecuted with the utmost vigor,
and the enemy given no time to rally. . . . Endeavor, therefore, to dis-
possess them of Chancellorsville, which will permit the union of the
army."
• • •
Hooker did not wait for Stuart or anyone else to dispossess him
of Chancellorsville. He dispossessed himself. After establishing in the
predawn darkness a secondary line of defense — a formidable V-shaped
affair, with Reynolds deployed along Hunting Run, Meade at the south-
ern apex, where the roads from Ely's and U.S. Fords came together in
rear of army headquarters, and the fragments of Howard reassembled in
Meade's old position along Mineral Spring Run, so that the flanks were
anchored, right and left, on the Rapidan and the Rappahannock — he
rode forward at first light, past the works still held by Couch and Slo-
cum around Fairview, to confer in person with Sickles. Despite last
night's horrendous experience of being mauled by foes and friends,
Sickles had got his nerve back and was all for holding his ground; but
Hooker would not hear of it, and ordered him to withdraw at once. It
was this well-intentioned readjustment, designed to tidy up his lines and
consolidate his defenses south of the vital crossroads, which resulted in
his dispossession. Hazel Grove turned out to be the key to the whole
advance position, since rebel artillery posted there could enfilade the in-
[304] THE CIVIL WAR^-1863
trenchments around Fairview, which in turn were all that covered Chan-
cellorsville itself. The result was that everything south of the improvised
V came suddenly unglued, and Hooker was left, scarcely twelve
hours after his apparent delivery from the first, with a possible second
disaster on his hands.
Stuart's advance, south of the turnpike and into the rising sun,
coincided with Sickles' withdrawal, the final stages of which became a
rout as the graybacks swarmed into Hazel Grove and overran the tail
of the blue column. Immediately behind the first wave of attackers came
the guns, 30 of them slamming away from the just-won heights at the
Federals massed around Fairview, while another 30 assailed the western
flank from a position near Howard's former headquarters, back out the
pike, and 24 more were roaring from down the plank road to the south-
east. Lee's midwinter reorganization of the Confederate long arm, for in-
creased flexibility in close-up support, was paying short-term dividends
this morning. Caught in the converging fire of these 84 guns, along with
others west and south, the troops of Couch and Slocum were infected by
the panic Sickles' men brought out of the smoke at Hazel Grove. North
of the pike, sheltered by the breastworks Jackson had heard them con-
structing the night before, the bluecoats held fast against repeated as-
saults by the rebel infantry, but they were galled by the crossfire from
batteries whose shots were plowing the fields around the crossroads in
their rear and smashing their lines of supply and communication. Not
even the Chancellor mansion, converted by now into a hospital as well as
a headquarters by surgeons who took doors off their hinges and propped
them on chairs for use as operating tables, was safe from the bombard-
ment — as Hooker himself discovered presently, in a most emphatic
manner. Shortly after 9 o'clock he was standing on the southwest ve-
randa, leaning against one of the squat wooden pillars, when a solid pro-
jectile struck and split it lengthwise. He fell heavily to the floor, stunned
by the shock. His aides gathered round and took him out into the yard,
where they laid him on a blanket and poured a jolt of brandy down
his throat. Revived by this first drink in weeks, Fighting Joe got up,
rather wobbly still, and walked off a short distance, calling for his horse.
It was well that he did, for just after he rose a second cannonball landed
directly on the blanket, as if to emphasize the notion suggested by the
first that the war had become an intensely personal matter between the
Union commander and the rebel gunners who were probing for his life.
He mounted awkwardly, suffering from a numbness on the side of his
body that had been in contact with the shattered pillar, and rode for the
rear, accompanied by his staff.
Despite the fact that he would succeed to command of the army
in the event that its present chief was incapacitated, Couch knew noth-
ing of Hooker's precipitate change of base until about 10 o'clock, when
he received a summons to join him behind Meade's lines, where the apex
Death of a Soldier [ 305 ]
of the secondary V came down to within a mile of the Chancellor house.
Though he had his hands quite full just then — it was during the past
half hour that the lines around Fairview had begun to come unglued in
earnest — Couch told Hancock to take charge, and set out rearward in
the wake of his chief, whom he found stretched out on a cot in a tent
beside the road to U.S. Ford. "Couch, I turn the command of the army
over to you," the injured general said, raising himself on one elbow as he
spoke. However, his next words showed that he did not really mean
what he had said. Whether or not he had control of himself at this point
was open to question, but there was no doubt that he intended to retain
control of the army. "You will withdraw it and place it in the position
designated on this map," he added, indicating a field sketch with the
V drawn on it to show where the new front lines would run. Couch
perhaps was relieved to hear that he would not be given full control,
along with full responsibility — "If he is killed, what shall I do with this
disjointed army?" he had asked himself as soon as he heard that Hooker
had been hurt — but others were hoping fervently that he would take
charge; for he was known to be a fighter. "By God, we'll have some
fighting now," a colonel said stoutly as Couch emerged from the tent.
Meade looked inquiringly at his friend, hoping to receive at last the or-
der for which he had been waiting all morning: Go in. Instead, Couch
shook his head by way of reply and relayed Hooker's instructions for a
withdrawal.
In any event, such instructions were superfluous by now except
as they applied to Hancock, whose division was the only one still main-
taining, however shakily, its forward position in a state that even
approached cohesiveness. The choice, if the army's present disjointed
condition allowed for any choice at all, lay not in whether or not to
withdraw, as Hooker expressly directed, but in whether or not to coun-
terattack and thus attempt to recover what had been lost by the retreat
already in progress; which manifestly would be difficult, if not down-
right impossible, since the Confederates had just seized the heights at
Fairview and with them domination of the open fields across which the
troops of Sickles, Couch, and Slocum were streaming to find sanctuary
within the line of breastworks to the north. Hancock's rear-guard divi-
sion was having to back-pedal fast to keep from being cut off or over-
run by a horde of butternut pursuers who were screaming as triumph-
antly now, and with what appeared to be equally good cause, as thev
had done when they bore down on Howard's startled Dutchmen yester-
day. While Stuart pressed eastward, making his largest gains on the south
side of the turnpike, Lee had been pushing north and west up the plank
road and reaching out simultaneously to the left, past Catharine Furnace,
for the anticipated hookup. It was his belief that the best and quickest
way to accomplish the reunion of the two wings of his army would be
to uncover Chancellorsville, after which it was his intention to launch a
[306] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
full-scale joint assault that would throw Hooker back against the Rap-
pahannock and destroy him.
For a time it looked as if that might indeed be possible in the ten
full hours of daylight still remaining. Never before, perhaps, had the
Army of Northern Virginia fought with such frenzy and exaltation,
such apparent confidence in its invincibility under Lee. Accompanied by
the roar of artillery from the dominant heights, McLaws and Anderson
moved steadily westward up the turnpike and the plank road, while
Rodes, Colston, and Henry Heth — the senior brigadier in Hill's divi-
sion — plunged eastward along both sides of the turnpike, cheered on
by Stuart, who rode among them, jaunty in his red-lined cape, hoicking
them up to the firing line and singing at the top of his voice some new
words set to a familiar tune: "Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out the
Wilderness?" All advanced rapidly toward the common objective, east
and west, as the bluecoats faded back from contact. Shortly before 10.30
the two wings came together with a mighty shout in the hundred-acre
clearing around the Chancellor mansion, which had been set afire by the
bombardment. Lee rode forward from Hazel Grove, past Fairview, on
whose crown two dozen guns had been massed to tear at the rear of the
retreating enemy columns, and then into the yard of the burning house,
formerly headquarters of the Union army, where the jubilant Confeder-
ates, recognizing the gray-bearded author of their victory, tendered him
the wildest demonstration of their lives. "The fierce soldiers with their
faces blackened with the smoke of battle, the wounded crawling with
feeble limbs from the fury of the devouring flames, all seemed possessed
with a common impulse," a staff man later wrote. "One long, unbroken
cheer, in which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on the earth
blended with the strong voices of those who still fought, rose high above
the roar of battle and nailed the presence of the victorious chief. He sat
in the full realization of all that soldiers dream of — triumph. ... As I
looked upon him in the complete fruition of the success which his genius,
courage, and confidence in his army had won," the officer added, "I
thought that it must have been from such a scene that men in ancient
times rose to the dignity of gods."
In the midst of this rousing accolade a courier arrived with a dis-
patch from Jackson, formally reporting that the extent of his wounds
had compelled him to relinquish command of his corps. Lee had not
known till now of the amputation, and the news shook him profoundly.
His elation abruptly replaced by sadness, he dictated in reply an expres-
sion of regret. "Could I have directed events," he told his wounded
lieutenant, "I would have chosen for the good of the country to be dis-
abled in your stead," and added: "I congratulate you upon the victory,
which is due to your skill and energy." This done, he returned to the
business at hand. He had, as he said, won a victory; but if it was to
amount to much more than the killing, as before, of large numbers of an
Death of a Soldier [ 307 ]
enemy whose reserves were practically limitless, the present advantage
would have to be pressed to the point at which Hooker, caught in the
coils of the Rappahannock and with the scare still on him, would have
to choose between slaughter and surrender. Before this could be accom-
plished, however, or even begin to be accomplished by a resumption of
the advance, the attackers themselves would have to be reorganized and
realigned for the final sweep of the fields and thickets stretching north-
ward to the river. Lee gave instructions for this to be done as quickly as
possible, and while waiting got off a dispatch to Davis in Richmond. "We
have again to thank Almighty God for a great victory," he announced.
His hope was that he would be sending another announcement of
an even greater victory by nightfall. But just as he was about to order
the attack, a courier on a lathered horse rode in from the east with news
of a disaster. At dawn that morning, with a rush across the pontoon
bridge they had thrown under cover of darkness, the Federals had oc-
cupied Fredericksburg. Sedgwick then had feinted at the thinly held de-
fenses on the ridge beyond the town, first on the far left and then the
right, by way of distracting attention from his main effort against the
center. This too had been repulsed, not once but twice, before the weight
of numbers told and the bluecoats swarmed up and over Marye's
Heights. In accordance with previous instructions designed for such a
crisis, Early had withdrawn southward to protect the army's trains at
Guiney Station; but Sedgwick had not pursued in that direction. Instead,
he had moved — was moving now — due west along the plank road,
which lay open in Lee's rear. This was the worst of all possible threats,
and the southern commander had no choice except to meet it at this
worst of all possible times. Postponing the assault on Hooker, he de-
tached McLaws to head eastward and delay Sedgwick, if possible, while
Anderson extended his present right out the River Road to prevent a
junction of the two Union forces in case Sedgwick managed to sidestep
McLaws or brush him out of the way. By now it was close to 3 o'clock.
Holding Rodes and Heth in their jump-off positions, Lee ordered Colston
to move up the Ely's Ford Road in order to establish and maintain
contact with Hooker, who might be emboldened by this new turn of
events. "Don't engage seriously," Lee told Colston, "but keep the enemy
in check and prevent him from advancing. Move at once."
Now as before, he was improvising, dividing his badly outnum-
bered army in order to deal with a two-pronged menace. While Mc-
Laws swung east to throw his 7000 soldiers in the teeth of Sedgwick's
20,000 or more, Lee would endeavor to hold Hooker's 80,000 in position
with his own 37,000. When and if he managed to stabilize the situation
— as Jackson had done, two days ago, with the advance beyond Taber-
nacle Church — he would decide which of the two enemy wings to leap
at, north or east. Meanwhile, as usual, he was prepared to take advantage
of any blunder his opponents might commit, and he was determined to
[308] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
recover the initiative. Above all, he kept his head and refused to take
counsel of his fears. When an excited officer, alarmed by the threat to
the army's rear, arrived with a lurid eyewitness account of the loss of
Marye's Heights, Lee cut him short. "We will attend to Mr Sedgwick
later," he said calmly.
What with the relentless depletion of his forces, siphoned off
westward at the rate of a corps a day for the past two days, and the
spate of discretionary orders, generally so delayed in transmission that
1 he conditions under which they had been issued no longer obtained by
the time they came to hand, John Sedgwick — "Uncle John" to his
troops, a fifty-year-old bachelor New Englander with thirty years of
army service, including West Point, the Mexican War, the Kansas bor-
der troubles, and frontier Indian uprisings, in all of which he had shown
a good deal more of plodding dependability than of flash — had diffi-
culty in maintaining the unruffled disposition for which he was be-
loved. Even the peremptory dispatch received last night, after the up-
roar subsided in the thickets across the way, had left him somewhat
puzzled. Hooker told him to "cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg
on receipt of this order," which was clear enough, so far as the words
themselves went; but what did it mean? Surely the army commander
knew he was already across the Rappahannock, and in fact had been
across it for the past three days. . . . Deciding that it meant what it ought
to mean, he told Gibbon, whose division was still at Falmouth, to cross
the river at dawn and seize the west-bank town, preparatory to joining
in the attack Sedgwick was planning to launch against the fortified ridge
with his other three divisions. He had not taken part in the December
battle, having been laid up with three wounds received at Antietam, but
he knew well enough what Burnside had encountered on this ground.
For a time, indeed, it appeared that Sedgwick was going to do no bet-
ter, despite his usual methodical preparations. After feinting on the left
and right, he sent ten regiments in mass against the sunken road at the
foot of the heights where so many men had come to grief, five months
ago, when two of Longstreet's divisions held this section of the line.
Now, however, so well had the feints misled the defenders, all that
were there were two slim regiments and sixteen guns. Even so, the
first two assaults were bloodily repulsed. As the bluecoats dropped back
into the swale for a breather, preparatory to giving the thing another
try, the colonel of a Wisconsin regiment made a short speech to the men
who would lead the third assault. "When the signal forward is given you
will advance at double-quick," he told them. "You will not fire a gun
and you will not stop until you get the order to halt." He paused briefly,
then added: "You will never get that order."
The Badgers gulped, absorbing the shock of this, then cheered
Death of a Soldier [ 309 ]
and went in fast, the other nine regiments following close on their heels.
Beyond the stone wall to their front, Barksdale's two Mississippi regi-
ments turned loose with everything they had, attempting to shatter the
head of the column of assault, while four batteries of the Washington
Artillery, a crack New Orleans outfit, broke into a frenzied roar on
the ridge beyond. The attackers took their losses and kept going, over the
wall and among the defenders with the bayonet, then across the sunken
road and up the slope of Marye's Heights with scarcely a pause, staring
directly into the muzzles of the flaming guns on the crest. These too
were taken in a rush as the cannoneers got off a final volley and broke
for the rear. Within half an hour, and at a cost of no more than 1500
casualties, Sedgwick had his flags aflutter on ground that Burnside had
spent 6300 men for no more than a fairly close-up look at, back in De-
cember. The bluecoats went into a victory dance, hurrahing and thump-
ing each other on the back in celebration of their triumph; whereas the
Confederates, several hundred of whom had been captured, were cor-
respondingly dejected or wrathful, depending on the individual reaction
to defeat. One cannoneer, who had managed to get away at the last mo-
ment, just as the Union wave broke over his battery, was altogether furi-
ous. "Guns be damned!" he replied hotly when a reserve artillerist
twitted him by asking where his guns were. "I reckon now the people of
the Southern Confederacy are satisfied that Barksdale's Brigade and the
Washington Artillery can't whip the whole damned Yankee army! "
Having broken Jubal Early's line and thrown him into retreat,
Sedgwick would have enjoyed pursuing his West Point classmate down
the Telegraph Road, but another classmate, Hooker himself, had forbid-
den this by insisting that he push westward without delay, so that be-
tween them, as Fighting Joe put it, they could "use up" Lee. Moreover,
at 10 o'clock — less than an hour after being stunned by the split pillar,
and at about the same time, as it turned out, that his forward defenses
began to come unglued — Hooker had his adjutant send Sedgwick a
dispatch reminding him of his primary mission: "You will hurry up your
column. The enemy's right flank now rests near the plank road at Chan-
cellorsville, all exposed. You will attack at once." This reached Sedg-
wick at about 11.30, amid the victory celebration on Marye's Heights,
and he did what he could to comply. Leaving Gibbon to hold Freder-
icksburg in his rear, he began to prepare his other three divisions for the
advance on Lee. It was a time-consuming business, however, to break up
the celebration and get the troops into formation for the march. The
lead division did not get started until 2 o'clock, and it was brought to a
sudden halt within the hour, just over a mile from Marye's Heights, by
the sight of Confederate skirmishers in position along a ridge athwart the
road. Despite Hooker's assurance that Lee's flank was "all exposed," the
graybacks seemed quite vigilant, and what was more they appeared to be
[310] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
present in considerable strength, with guns barking aggressively in
support. Sedgwick was obliged to halt and deploy in the face of the re-
sistance, at the cost of burning more daylight.
Slowly the rebels faded back, bristling as they went, leapfrog-
ging their guns from ridge to ridge and flailing the pursuers all the time.
Near Salem Church, a mile ahead and a mile short of the junction of the
plank road and the turnpike, they stiffened. It was 4 o'clock by now; the
day was going fast, and Sedgwick was still a good half-dozen miles from
Chancellorsville. Without waiting for the others to come up, he sent the
troops of his lead division forward on the run. At first they made head-
way, driving the graybacks before them, but then they encountered a
heavy line of battle. Repulsed, they came streaming back across the
fields. The second division was up by now, however, with the third not
far behind, and between them they managed to check the pursuit,
though by the time Sedgwick got them rallied and into attack formation
the day was too far gone for fighting. Aware by now that he had run
into something considerably stronger than a mere rear guard, he set up a
perimetrical defense and passed the word for his 22,000 soldiers to bed
down.
Today had been a hard day. Tomorrow gave promise of being
even harder. He had set out to put the squeeze on Lee, but it had begun
to seem to him that he was the one in danger now. All around him, south
and east as well as west, he could hear enemy columns moving in the
darkness. "Sedgwick scarcely slept that night," an observant soldier
later recalled. "From time to time he dictated a dispatch to General
Hooker. He would walk for a few paces apart and listen; then returning
he would lie down again in the damp grass, with his saddle for a pillow,
and try to sleep. The night was inexpressibly gloomy."
The night was inexpressibly gloomy, and he was in graver dan-
ger than he knew. All that had stood in his way at the outset, when
he began his march from Marye's Heights, had been a single brigade of
Alabamians, stationed for the past three days on outpost duty at Banks
Ford, from which point their commander, Brigadier General Cadmus
Wilcox, had shifted them, on his own initiative, when he learned that
Early's defenses had been pierced. Determined to do what he could to
protect Lee's unguarded rear, he had taken up a position athwart the
plank road, spreading his men in the semblance of a stout line of skir-
mishers, and thus had managed to bluff Sedgwick into caution, delaying
his advance until McLaws had had time to post his division near Salem
Church and rock the charging bluecoats on their heels. As a result, when
darkness ended the fighting here to the east of Chancellorsville, Lee had
what he had been hoping for: a more or less stable situation and the op-
portunity, as he had said, to "attend to Mr Sedgwick." Early, he learned,
had retreated only a couple of miles down the Telegraph Road, then
Death of a Soldier [311]
had halted on finding that he was unpursued. Lee wrote him, just after
sunset, that McLaws was confronting the Federals east of Salem Church;
"If . . . you could come upon their left flank, and communicate with
General McLaws, I think you would demolish them." A similar message
went to McLaws, instructing him to co-operate with Early. "It is neces-
sary to beat the enemy," Lee told him, "and I hope you will do it."
A dawn reconnaissance — Monday now: May 4 — showed
Hooker's intrenchments well laid out and greatly strengthened over-
night, the flanks securely anchored below and above the U.S. Ford es-
cape hatch, and the whole supported by batteries massed in depth. While
this discouraged attack, it also seemed to indicate that the Federals had
gone entirely on the defensive in the region north of Chancellorsville.
At any rate Lee proceeded on that assumption. Canceling a projected
feeling-out of the enemy lines along Mineral Spring Run, he shifted half
of Heth's division from the far left, beyond Colston and Rodes, to take up
Anderson's position on the right, and ordered Anderson east to join with
McLaws and Early in removing the threat to his rear. His plan, if daring,
was simple enough. Stuart and the 25,000 survivors of Jackson's flanking
column were given the task of keeping Hooker's 80,000 penned in their
breastworks, while the remaining 22,000 Confederates disposed of Sedg-
wick, who had about the same number to the east. This last was now the
main effort, and Lee decided to supervise it in person. Riding over to Salem
Church at noon, he conferred with McLaws, who was awaiting Ander-
son's arrival before completing his dispositions for attack, and then pro-
ceeded east, skirting the southward bulge of Sedgwick's perimeter, to
see Early. He found him on Marye's Heights, which he had reoccupied
soon after sunrise, posting the remnant of Barksdale's brigade in the
sunken road to resist another possible advance by Gibbon, who had re-
tired into Fredericksburg. The plan of attack, as McLaws and Early had
worked it out, was for Anderson to take up a position between them,
confronting Sedgwick from the south, while they moved against him,
simultaneously, from the east and west. The result, if all went well, would
be his destruction. Lee gave his approval, though he saw that this would
involve a good deal of maneuvering over difficult terrain, and rode back
toward the center.
It was past 2 o'clock by now, and Anderson was not yet in posi-
tion. Time was running out for Lee today, as it had done the day before
for Sedgwick. Already he was finding what it cost him to be deprived
even temporarily of the services of Jackson, of whom he would say be-
fore the week was over: "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my
right." More hours were spent examining the approaches and correcting
the alignment of the columns so as to avoid collisions. While Anderson
continued to balk, McLaws was strangely apathetic and Early floun-
dered in the ravines across the way; it was 6 o'clock before all the troops
were in position and the signal guns were fired. The fighting was savage
[3«]
THE CIVIL WAR »" 186 3
at scattered points, especially on
Early's front, but McLaws got
lost in a maze of thickets and
scarcely made contact, either
with the enemy or with An-
derson, whose men added to the
confusion by firing into each
other as they advanced. Fog
thickened the dusk and the dis-
jointed movement lurched to a
halt within an hour. Sedgwick
had been shaken, though hardly
demolished. Anxious to exploit
his gains, such as they were, be-
fore the Federals reintrenched
or got away across the river, Lee
for the first time in his career or-
dered a night attack. While the
artillery shelled Banks Ford in the darkness, attempting to seal off the
exit, the infantry groped about in the fog, dog-tired, and made no prog-
ress. At first light, the skirmishers recovered their sense of direction,
pushed forward, and found that the works to their front were empty;
Sedgwick had escaped. Though his casualties had been heavy — worse
than 4600 in all, including the men lost earlier — he had got his three
divisions to safety across a bridge the engineers had thrown a mile below
Banks Ford, well beyond range of the all-night interdictory fire.
Word came presently from Barksdale that Gibbon too had re-
crossed the river at Fredericksburg and cut his pontoons loose from the
west bank. This meant that for the first time in three days no live, uncap-
tured bluecoats remained on the Confederate side of the Rappahannock
except the ones intrenched above Chancellorsville; Lee had abolished
the threat to his rear. Though he was far from satisfied, having failed in
another of a lengthening sequence of attempts to destroy a considerable
segment of the Union army, he had at least restored — and even improved
— the situation that had existed yesterday, when he was preparing to
give Hooker his undivided attention. Once more intent on destruction,
he allowed the men of McLaws and Anderson no rest, but ordered them
to take up the march back to Chancellorsville, intending for them to re-
sume the offensive they had abandoned for Sedgwick's sake the day be-
fore. Stuart reported that the Federals, though still present in great
strength behind their V, had made no attempt to move against him,
either yesterday or so far this morning; yet Lee did what he could to
hasten the march westward, not so much out of fear that Hooker would
lash out at Stuart, whom he outnumbered better than three to one, as
out of fear that he would do as Sedgwick had done and make his escape
Death of a Soldier
[313]
across the river before the Confederates had time to reconcentrate and
crush him.
In point of fact, Lee's fears on the latter count were more valid
than he had any way of knowing, not having attended a council of war
held the night before at his opponent's headquarters. At midnight, while
Sedgwick was beginning his withdrawal across the Rappahannock,
Hooker had called his other corps commanders together to vote on
whether they should do the same. Couch, Reynolds, Meade, Howard,
and Sickles reported promptly, but Slocum, who had the farthest to
come, did not arrive until after the meeting had broken up. Hooker put
the question to them — remarking, as Couch would recall, "that his in-
structions compelled him to cover Washington, not to jeopardize the
army, etc." — then retired to let them talk it over among themselves.
Reynolds was much fatigued from loss of sleep; he lay down in one cor-
ner of the tent to get some rest, telling Meade to vote his proxy for at-
tack. Meade did so, adding his own vote to that effect. Howard too was
for taking the offensive; for unlike Meade and Reynolds, whose two
corps had scarcely fired a shot, he had a reputation to retrieve. Couch on
the other hand voted to withdraw, but made it clear that he favored
such a course only because Hooker was still in charge. Sickles, whose
corps had suffered almost as many casualties as any two of the other five
combined, was in favor of pulling back at once, Hooker or no Hooker.
Fighting Joe returned, was given the three-to-two opinion, and ad-
journed the council with the announcement that he intended to with-
draw the army beyond the river as soon as possible. As the generals left
the tent, Reynolds broke out angrily, quite loud enough for Hooker to
overhear him: "What was the use of calling us together at this time of
night when he intended to retreat anyhow?"
Their instructions were to cut whatever roads were necessary,
leading from their present posi-
tions back to U.S. Ford, while
the army engineers were select-
ing a strong inner line, anchored
a mile above and a mile below
the two pontoon bridges, for
Meade's corps to occupy in cov-
ering the withdrawal. All were
hard at work on their various as-
signments before dawn on the
5th, at which time Hooker
crossed in person, accompanied
by his staff. Then at noon, with
the pull-back to the inner line
completed, rain began to fall.
Chunk
LEE
21,000
[314] THE CIVIL WAR»" 1863
It fell in earnest, developing quickly into what one diarist called "a tre-
mendous cold storm." By midnight the river had risen six feet, endanger-
ing the bridges and interrupting the retreat before more than a handful
of regiments had reached the opposite bank. Cut off from Hooker,
Couch believed he saw his chance. "We will stay where we are and
fight it out," he announced. But peremptory orders arrived at 2 a.m. for
the movement to be continued. One of the bridges was cannibalized to
piece out the other, and the crossing was resumed. By midmorning
Wednesday, May 6, it was completed. Except for the dead and missing,
who would not be coming back, the army's week-long excursion south
of the river had come full circle.
Lee was up by then, after being delayed by the storm the day be-
fore, but when his skirmishers pushed forward through the dripping
woods they found the enemy gone. He lost his temper at the news and
scolded the brigadier who brought it. "That is the way you young men
always do," he fumed. "You allow those people to get away. I tell you
what to do, but you won't do it!" He gestured impatiently. "Go after
them, and damage them all you can!" But no further damage was
possible; the bluecoats were well beyond his reach. At a cost of less than
13,000 casualties he had inflicted more than 17,000 and had won what
future critics would call the most brilliant victory of his career, but he
was by no means satisfied. He had aimed at total capture or annihilation
of the foe, and the extent to which he had fallen short of this was, to
his mind, the extent to which he had failed. Leaving a few regiments to
tend the wounded, bury the dead, and glean the spoils abandoned by
the Unionists on the field, he marched the rest of his army back through
the rain-drenched Wilderness to Fredericksburg and the comparative
comfort of the camps it had left a week ago, when word first came that
the enemy was across the Rappahannock.
Back at Falmouth that evening, while his army straggled east-
ward in his wake, Hooker learned that Stoneman's raid, from which so
much had been expected, had been almost a total failure. Intending, as
he later reported, to "magnify our small force into overwhelming num-
bers," the cavalryman had broken up his column into fragments, none
of which, as it turned out, had been strong enough to do more than tem-
porary damage to the installations in Lee's rear. According to one dis-
gusted trooper, "Our only accomplishments were the burning of a few
canal boats on the upper James River, some bridges, hen roosts, and to-
bacco houses." Stoneman returned the way he had come, recrossing at
Raccoon Ford on the morning of May 7, while other portions of his
scattered column turned up as far away as Yorktown. His total losses, in
addition to about 1000 horses broken down and abandoned, were 82
men killed and wounded and 307 missing. These figures seemed to
Hooker to prove that Stoneman had not been seriously engaged, and it
was not long before he removed him from command. However, his own
Death of a Soldier [ 3 1 5 1
casualties, while quite as heavy as anyone on his own side of the line
could have desired — the ultimate total was 17,287, as compared to
Lee's 12,821 — were equally condemning, though in a different way,
since a breakdown of them indicated the disjointed manner in which he
had fought and refrained from fighting the battle. Meade and Reynolds,
for example, had lost fewer than 1000 men between them, while Sedg-
wick and Sickles had lost more than four times that number each. Ob-
viously Lincoln's parting admonition, "Put in all your men," had been
ignored. Hooker was quick to place the blame for his defeat on Stone-
man, Averell, Howard, and Sedgwick, sometimes singly and at other
times collectively. It was only in private, and some weeks later, that he
was able to see, or at any rate confess, where the real trouble had lain.
"I was not hurt by a shell, and I was not drunk," he told a fellow officer.
"For once I lost confidence in Joe Hooker, and that is all there is to it."
In time that would become the registered consensus, but for the
present many of his compatriots were hard put to understand how such
a disaster had come about. Horace Greeley staggered into the Tribune
managing editor's office Thursday morning, his face a ghastly color and
his lips trembling. "My God, it is horrible," he exclaimed. "Horrible.
And to think of it — 130,000 magnificent soldiers so cut to pieces by
less than 60,000 half-starved ragamuffins!" An Episcopal clergyman, also
in New York, could not reconcile the various reports and rumors he
recorded in his diary that night. "It would seem that Hooker has beaten
Lee, and that Lee has beaten Hooker; that we have taken Fredericks-
burg, and that the rebels have taken it also; that we have 4500 prisoners,
and the rebels 5400; that Hooker has cut off Lee's retreat, and Lee has
cut off Sedgwick's retreat, and Sedgwick has cut off everybody's re-
treat generally, but has retreated himself although his retreat was cut
off. ... In short, all is utter confusion. Everything seems to be every-
where, and everybody all over, and there is no getting at any truth."
Official Washington was similarly confused and dismayed. When Sum-
ner of Massachusetts heard that Hooker had been whipped, he flung up
his hands and struck an attitude of despair. "Lost — lost," he groaned.
"All is lost!" But the hardest-hit man of them all was Lincoln, whose
hopes had had the longest way to fall. Six months ago, on the heels of
Emancipation, he had foreseen clear sailing for the ship of state pro-
vided the helmsman kept a steady hand on the tiller. "We are like whalers
who have been on a long chase," he told a friend. "We have at last got
the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or
with one flop of his tail he will send us all into eternity." Then had come,
Fredericksburg, and he had said: "If there is a worse place than Hell, I
am in it." Now there was this, a still harder flop of the monster's tail,
and Hooker and the Army of the Potomac had gone sprawling. Even be-
fore the news arrived, a White House caller had found the President
"anxious and harassed beyond any power of description." Yet this was
[ 316 ] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
nothing compared to his reaction later in the day, when he reappeared
with a telegram in his hand. "News from the army," he said in a trem-
bling voice. The visitor read that Hooker was in retreat, and looking up
saw that Lincoln's face, "usually sallow, was ashen in hue. The paper on
the wall behind him was of the tint known as Trench gray,' and even
in that moment of sorrow ... I vaguely took in the thought that the
complexion of the anguished President's visage was like that of the
wall." He walked up and down the room, hands clasped behind his back.
"My God, my God," he exclaimed as he paced back and forth. "What
will the country say? What will the country say?"
Within the ranks of the army itself, slogging down the muddy
roads toward Falmouth, the reaction was not unlike the New York
clergyman's. "No one seems to understand this move," a Pennsylvania
private wrote, "but I have no doubt it is all right." He belonged to
Meade's corps, which had seen very little fighting, and he could not quite
comprehend that what he had been involved in was a defeat. All he
knew for certain was that the march back to camp was a hard one.
"Most of the way the mud was over shoe, in some places knee deep, and
the rain made our loads terrible to tired shoulders." Others knew well
enough that they had taken part in a fiasco. "Go boil your shirt!" was
their reply to jokes attempted by roadside stragglers. Turning the matter
over in their minds, they could see that Hooker had been trounced, but
they could not see that this applied to themselves, who had fought as
well as ever — except, of course, the unregenerate Dutchmen — when-
ever and wherever they got the chance. Mostly, though, they preferred
to ignore the question of praise or blame. "And thus ends the second at-
tempt on the capture of Fredericksburg," a Maine soldier recorded when
he got back to Falmouth. "I have nothing to say about it in any way. I
have no opinions to express about the Gen'ls or the men nor do I wish to.
I leave it in the hands of God. I don't want to think of it at all."
Unquestionably, this latest addition to the lengthening roster of
Confederate victories was a great one. Indeed, considering the odds that
had been faced and overcome, it was perhaps in terms of glory the great-
est of them all; Chmicellorsville would be stitched with pride across the
crowded banners of the Army of Northern Virginia. But its ultimate
worth, as compared to its cost, depended in large measure on the out-
come of Stonewall Jackson's present indisposition. As Lee had said on
Sunday morning, when he first learned that his lieutenant had been
wounded, "Any victory is dearly bought which deprives us of the serv-
ices of General Jackson, even for a short time."
So far — that is, up to the time when Hooker threw in the sponge
and the northern army fell back across the Rappahannock — Dr Mc-
Guire's prognosis had been most encouraging and the general himself
Death of a Soldier [ 317 ]
had been in excellent spirits, despite the loss of his arm. "I am wounded
but not depressed," he said when he woke from the sleep that followed
the amputation. "I believe it was according to God's will, and I can wait
until He makes his object known to me." Presently, when Lee's midday
note was brought, congratulating him on the victory, "which is due to
your skill and energy," Jackson permitted himself the one criticism he
had ever made of his commander. "General Lee is very kind," he said,
"but he should give the praise to God." Next day, May 4, with Sedg-
wick threatening the army's rear, he was removed to safety in an ambu-
lance. The route was south to Todd's Tavern, then southeast, through
Spotsylvania Court House, to Guiney Station, where he had met his
wife and child, two weeks ago today, to begin the idyl that had ended
with the news that Hooker was on the march. All along the way, coun-
try people lined the roadside to watch the ambulance go by. They
brought with them, and held out for the attendants to accept, such few
gifts as their larders afforded in these hard times, cool buttermilk, hot
biscuits, and fried chicken. Jackson was pleased by this evidence of their
concern, and for much of the 25-mile journey he chatted with an aide,
even responding to a question as to what he thought of Hooker's plan
for the battle whose guns rumbled fainter as the ambulance rolled south.
"It was in the main a good conception, sir; an excellent plan. But he
should not have sent away his cavalry. That was his great blunder. It
was that which enabled me to turn him, without his being aware of it,
and to take him by the rear." Of his own share in frustrating that plan,
he added that he believed his flank attack had been "the most successful
movement of my life. But I have received more credit for it than I de-
serve. Most men will think that I had planned it all from the first; but
it was not so. I simply took advantage of circumstances as they were pre-
sented to me in the providence of God. I feel that His hand led me."
By nightfall he was resting comfortably in a cottage on the
Chandler estate near Guiney Station. He slept soundly, apparently free
from pain, and woke next morning much refreshed. His wounds seemed
to give him little trouble; primary intention and granulation were under
way. All that day and the next, Tuesday and Wednesday, he rested easy,
talking mainly of religious matters, as had always been his custom in
times of relaxation. The doctor foresaw a rapid recovery and an early
return to duty. Then — late Wednesday night and early Thursday
morning, May 7 — a sudden change occurred. McGuire woke at dawn
to find his patient restless and in severe discomfort. Examination showed
that the general faced a new and formidable enemy: pneumonia. 1 Ic was
cupped, then given mercury, with antimony and opium, and morphine
to ease his pain. From that time on, as the drugs took effect and the
pneumonia followed its inexorable course, he drifted in and out of sleep
and fuddled consciousness. His wife arrived at midday, having been
delayed by Stoneman's raiders, to find him greatly changed from the
[ 3 i8] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
husband she had left eight days ago. Despite advance warning, she was
shocked at the sight of his wounds, especially the mutilated arm. More-
over, his cheeks were flushed, his breathing oppressed, and his senses
numbed. At first he scarcely knew her, but presently, in a more lucid
moment, he saw her anxiety and told her: "You must not wear a long
face. I love cheerfulness and brightness in a sickroom." He lapsed into
stupor, then woke again to find her still beside him. "My darling, you
are very much loved," he murmured. "You are one of the most precious
little wives in the world." Toward evening, he seemed to improve. Once
at least, in the course of the night, he appeared to be altogether himself
again. "Will you take this, General?" the doctor asked, bending over the
bed with a dose of medicine. Stonewall looked at him sternly. "Do your
duty," he said. Then, seeing the doctor hesitate, he repeated the words
quite firmly: "Do your duty." Still later, those in the room were startled
to hear him call out to his adjutant, Alexander Pendleton, who was in
Fredericksburg with Lee: "Major Pendleton, send in and see if there is
higher ground back of Chancellorsville! I must find out if there is high
ground between Chancellorsville and the river. . . . Push up the columns;
hasten the columns! Pendleton, you take charge of that. . . . Where is
Pendleton? Tell him to push up the columns." In his delirium he was
back on the field of battle, doing the one thing he did best in all the
world.
All that day and the next, which was Saturday, he grew steadily
worse; McGuire sent word to Fredericksburg and Richmond that re-
covery was doubtful. Lee could not believe a righteous cause would
suffer such a blow. "Surely General Jackson will recover," he said.
"God will not take him from us now that we need him so much." The
editor of the Richmond Whig agreed. "We need have no fears for Jack-
son," he wrote. "He is no accidental manifestation of the powers of
faith and courage. He came not by chance in this day and to this gen-
eration. He was born for a purpose, and not until that purpose is ful-
filled will his great soul take flight." Jackson himself inclined to this
belief that he would be spared for a specific purpose. "I am not afraid
to die," he said in a lucid moment Friday. "I am willing to abide by
the will of my Heavenly Father. But I do not believe I shall die at this
time. I am persuaded the Almighty has yet a work for me to perform."
On Saturday, when he was asked to name a hymn he would like to hear
sung, he requested "Shew Pity, Lord," Isaac Watts's paraphrase of the
Fifty-first Psalm:
"Shew pity y Lord; O Lord, forgive;
Let a repenting rebel live — "
This seemed to comfort him for a time, but night brought a return of
suffering. He tossed sleepless, mumbling battle orders. Though these
Death of a Soldier [319]
were mostly unintelligible, it was observed that he called most often on
A. P. Hill, his hardest-hitting troop commander, and Wells Hawks, his
commissary officer, as if even in delirium he strove to preserve a balance
between tactics and logistics.
Sunday, May 10, dawned fair and clear; McGuire informed Anna
Jackson that her husband could not last the day. She knelt at the bedside
of the unconscious general, telling him over and over that he would
'Very soon be in heaven." Presently he stirred and opened his eyes.
She asked him, "Do you feel willing to acquiesce in God's allotment if
He will you to go today?" He watched her. "I prefer it," he said, and
she pressed the point: "Well, before this day closes you will be with the
blessed Savior in his glory." There was a pause. "I will be the infinite
gainer to be translated," Jackson said as he dozed off again. He woke at
noon, and once more she broached the subject, telling him that he
would be gone before sundown. This time he seemed to understand her
better. "Oh no; you are frightened, my child. Death is not so near. I
may yet get well." She broke into tears, sobbing that the doctor had
said there was no hope. Jackson summoned McGuire. "Doctor, Anna in-
forms me that you have told her I am to die today. Is it so?" W r hen Mc-
Guire replied that it was so, the general seemed to ponder. Then he said,
"Very good, very good. It is all right." After a time he added, "It is the
Lord's day; my wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sun-
day."
At 1.30 the doctor told him he had no more than a couple of
hours to live. "Very good; it's all right," Jackson replied as before, but
more weakly, for his breathing was high in his throat by now. When
McGuire offered him brandy to keep up his strength, he shook his
head. "It will only delay my departure, and do no good," he protested.
"I want to preserve my mind, if possible, to the last." Presently,
though, he was back in delirium, alternately praying and giving com-
mands, all of which had to do with the offensive. Shortly after 3 o'clock,
a few minutes before he died, he called out: "Order A. P. Hill to pre-
pare for action! Pass the infantry to the front. . . . Tell Major
Hawks — " He left the sentence unfinished, seeming thus to have put the
war behind him; for he smiled as he spoke his last words, in a tone of
calm relief. "Let us cross over the river," he said, "and rest under the
shade of the trees."
ft
IT
ft
The Beleaguered City
* x *
WHILE HOOKER WAS CROSSING THE RAPPA-
hannock, unaware as yet that he would come to grief within a week,
Grant, having caught what he believed was a gleam of victory through
the haze of cigar smoke in the former ladies' cabin of the Magnolia, was
putting the final improvisatorial touches to a plan of campaign that
would open, two days later, with a crossing of the greatest river of them
all. He too might come to grief, as two of his three chief lieutenants
feared and even predicted, but he was willing to risk it for the sake of
the prize, which had grown in value with every sore frustration. As
spring advanced and the roads emerged from the drowned lands ad-
jacent to the Mississippi — although so far they were little more than
trails of slime through the surrounding ooze, not quite firm enough for
wagons nor quite wet enough for boats — the Illinois general, with
seven failures behind him in the course of the three months he had spent
attempting to take or bypass Vicksburg, reverted in early April to what
he had told Halleck in mid-January, before he left Memphis to assume
command in person of the expedition four hundred miles downriver:
"[I] think our troops must get below the city to be used effectively."
His plan, in essence, was to march his army down the Louisiana
bank to a position well south of the fortified bluff, then cross the river
and establish a bridgehead from which to assail the Confederate bastion
from the rear. The Duckport canal, designed to give his transports ac-
cess to Walnut and Roundaway bayous, and thus allow them to avoid
exposure to the plunging fire of the batteries at Vicksburg and War-
renton, had failed; only one small steamer had got through before the
water level fell too low for navigation; but exploration of the route
had shown that, by bridging those slews that could not be avoided by
following the crests of levees flanking the horseshoe curves of the sev-
eral bayous, it might be practicable to march dry-shod all the way from
Milliken's Bend to New Carthage, a west-bank hamlet about midway
[324]
THE CIVIL WAR
1863
Grants
Proposed
between Warrenton and Grand Gulf, third of the rebel east-bank strong-
holds. In late March, by way of preparation, Grant had assigned Mc-
Clernand the task of putting this route into shape for a march by his own
corps as well as the two others, which would follow. This, if it worked,
would get the army well south of its objective. Getting the troops across
the river was quite another matter, however, depending as it did on the
co-operation of the navy, which, as Grant said, "was absolutely essential
to the success (even to the contemplation) of such an enterprise." For
the navy to get below, in position to ferry the men across and cover the
east-bank landing, it would have to run the batteries, and this had been
shown in the past to be an expensive proposition even for armored ves-
sels, let alone the brittle-skinned transports which would be required for
the ferrying operation. JVloreover, Porter was no more under Grant's
command than Grant was under Porter's. The most Grant could do
was "request" that the run be made. But that was enough, as it turned
out. The admiral — who had re-
turned only the week before
from the near-disastrous Steele
Bayou expedition, considerably
the worse for wear and with
his boats still being hammered
back into shape — expressed an
instant willingness to give the
thing a try, though not without
first warning of what the con-
sequences would be, not only in
the event of initial failure but
also in the event of initial suc-
cess, so far at least as the navy
was concerned. He could make
a downstream run, he said, and
in fact had proved it twice al-
ready with the ill-fated Queen
of the West and the equally ill-fated Indianola, but his underpowered
vessels could never attempt a slow-motion return trip, against the four-
knot current, until Vicksburg had been reduced. "You must recollect
that when these gunboats once go below we give up all hopes of ever
getting them up again," he replied, wanting it understood from the start
that this would be an all-or-nothing venture. Moreover: "If I do send
vessels below, it will be the best vessels I have, and there will be nothing
left to attack Haines Bluff, in case it should be deemed necessary to try
it." Grant replied on April 2 that McClernand's men were already at
work on the circuitous thirty-mile road down to New Carthage; he had
no intention of turning back, even if that had been possible; and in any
case Haines Bluff had cost the army blood enough by now, "I would,
The Beleaguered City [ 325 ]
Admiral, therefore renew my request to prepare for running the block-
ade at as early a day as possible."
Two days later he wrote Halleck: "My expectation is for a por-
tion of the naval fleet to run the batteries of Vicksburg, whilst the army
moves through by this new route [to New Carthage]. Once there, I
will move either to Warrenton or Grand Gulf; most probably the latter.
From either of these points there are good roads to Vicksburg, and
from Grand Gulf there is a good road to Jackson and the Black River
Bridge without crossing the Black River." Much could be said for mak-
ing the landing at either place. Warrenton, for example, was some fifteen
air-line miles closer to his objective. But he knew well enough that a
straight line was not always the surest connection between two military
points. A Grand Gulf landing, in addition to giving him access t»o Vicks-
burg's main artery of supply, would also afford him a chance to supple-
ment his own. By holding the newly established bridgehead with part
of his army and sending the balance downstream to assist in the reduc-
tion of Port Hudson by Banks, who presumably was working his way
upstream at the same time, he then would have an unbroken, all-weather
connection with New Orleans and would no longer be exclusively and
precariously dependent on what could be brought down from Memphis,
first by steamboat, then by wagon over the new road skirting the west-
bank complex of bayous across from the fortified bluff, and then again
by steamboat in order to get the supplies over the river and into the
east-bank bridgehead. Grant pondered the alternatives, and by April 1 1,
a week after the dispatch giving Halleck a brief statement of the problem,
he had made his choice: "Grand Gulf is the point at which I expect to
strike, and send an army corps to Port Hudson to co-operate with Gen-
eral Banks."
He did not know how Old Brains, whose timidity had been dem-
onstrated in situations far less risky than this one, would react to a plan
of campaign that involved 1 ) exposing the irreplaceable Union fleet to
instantaneous destruction by batteries that had been sited on command-
ing and impregnable heights with just that end in mind, 2) crossing a
mile-wide river in order to throw his troops into the immediate rear of
a rebel force of unknown strength which, holding as it did the interior
lines, presumably could be reinforced more quickly than his own, and
3) remaining dependent all the while, or at least until the problematical
capture of Port Hudson, on a supply line that was not only tenuous to
the point of inadequacy, but was also subject to being cut by enemy in-
tervention or obliterated by some accident of nature, by no means un-
usual at this season, such as a week of unrelenting rain, a sudden rise of
the river, and a resultant overflow that would re-drown the west-bank
lowlands and the improvised road that wound its way around and across
the curving bayous and treacherous morasses into which a wagon or a
gun could disappear completely, leaving no more trace than a man or a
[326] THE CIVIL WAR»*1863
mule whose bones had been picked clean by gars and crawfish. Whether
Halleck would approve the taking of all these risks, Grant did not know;
but he was left in no such doubt as to the reaction closer at hand. So far,
of his three corps commanders, only his archrival McClernand had indi-
cated anything resembling enthusiasm for the plan. Hard at work con-
structing makeshift bridges from materials found along the designated
route to New Carthage, which he reached before mid-April, the former
Illinois politician was in high spirits and predicted great results, for both
the country and himself, because his corps had been assigned to lead the
way. By contrast, though perhaps for the same reason — that is, because
the nonprofessional A4cClernand had the lead — Sherman and McPher-
son, along with Dana and practically every member of Grant's own staff,
considered the proposed operation not only overrisky and unwise, but
also downright unmilitary. Sherman in fact was so alarmed at the pros-
pect that he sat down and wrote Grant a long letter, insisting that the
proper course would be for the army to return at once to Memphis and
resume from there the overland advance along the Mississippi Central,
abandoned in December. When his friend and chief replied that he had
no intention of canceling his plans, Sherman had no choice except to go
along with them, although he still did not approve. "I confess I don't
like this roundabout project," he told one of his division commanders,
"but we must support Grant in whatever he undertakes." He was loyal
and he would remain so, but he also remained glum, writing home even
as he ordered his men out of their camps at Milliken's Bend to join the
movement: "I feel in its success less confidence than in any similar un-
dertaking of the war."
Porter too had doubts as to the over-all wisdom of Grant's plan,
as well as fears in regard to the specific risk the plan required the navy to
assume, but he took no counsel of them aside from the more or less nor-
mal precautions the prospect of such exposure always prompted, as in
the case of a farmer sending eggs to market in a springless wagon over a
bumpy road. Unlike Sherman, he wrote no Cassandran letters and made
no protest after his initial warning that once the fleet had gone below it
could not come back up again until the batteries had been silenced in its
rear. Instead, he kept busy preparing his crews and vessels for the pas-
sage of bluffs that bristled with 40-odd pieces of artillery, light and
heavy, manned by cannoneers whose skill had improved with every
chance to show it. By April 16 he was ready. Seven armored gunboats,
mounting a total of 79 guns, were assigned to make the run, accom-
panied by three army transports, loaded with commissary stores in-
stead of troops, and a steam ram captured the year before at Memphis
when the Confederate flotilla was abolished in a brief half-morning's
fight. At 9.30, two hours after dusk gave way to a starry but moonless
night, the column cleared the mouth of the Yazoo, Porter leading aboard
the flagship Benton.
The Beleaguered City [ 327 ]
The "run," so called, was in fact more creep than sprint, how-
ever, at least in its early stages; stealth was the watchword up and down
the line of eleven boats steaming southward in single file on the dark
chocolate surface of what one observer called "the great calm river,
more like a long winding lake than a stream." Furnaces had been banked
in advance, so as to show a minimum of smoke. All ports were covered
and all deck lights doused, except for hooded lanterns visible only from
dead astern for guidance. It was hoped that such precautions would hide
the column from prying eyes. To reduce the likelihood of noise, which
also might give the movement away, low speed was prescribed and ex-
haust pipes were diverted from the stacks to the paddle boxes, where the
hiss of steam would be muffled. Pets and poultry were put ashore,
moreover, lest a sudden mewing or cackling alert the rebel sentries. The
admiral was leaving as little as possible to chance; but in the event of
discovery he was prepared to shift at once from stealth to boldness.
Coal-laden barges were lashed to the starboard flanks of the warships,
leaving their port-side weapons free to take up any challenge from the
high-sited batteries on the Mississippi shore, and water-soaked bales of
hay were stacked around the otherwise unprotected boilers and pilot-
houses of the transports. Instructed to maintain a fifty-yard interval,
each helmsman was also told to steer a little to one side of the boat he
followed, so as not to have to slow engines or change course to avoid a
collision in case of a breakdown up ahead. Thus, though he wanted no
trouble he could avoid, Porter was prepared to give as well as receive
it in the event that his carefully woven veil of secrecy was ripped away.
Passing Young's Point at about 10.30, the dark and silent column swung
north as it approached the mouth of Sherman's abandoned canal, then
rounded the final turn at 1 1 sharp, altering course again from north to
south, and headed down the straightaway eastern shank of the hairpin
bend that led past Vicksburg's dark and silent bluff. Ten minutes later
all hell broke loose.
Grant was there to see the show, and he had his two families
with him, one military and the other personal, the former consisting of
his staff, the latter of his wife and their two sons, who had come down-
river from Illinois to afford him a sort of furlough-in-reverse. Both were
gathered tonight on the upper deck of the Magnolia, which was an-
chored three miles below Young's Point, just beyond range of the heav-
iest enemy guns, so that they watched as if from a box in a darkened
theater, awaiting the raising of the curtain. The general and Mrs Grant
occupied deck chairs near the starboard rail — front row center, as it
were — with twelve-year-old Fred beside them; Ulysses Junior, who was
ten, sat nearby in young Colonel Wilson's lap. Behind and on both sides
of them stood twenty-odd men in uniform, staff officers and two high-
ranking observers. One was Dana, who had been sent by Stanton to
watch Grant, and the other was no less a personage than Adjutant Gen-
[328] THE CIVIL WAR»* 1863
eral Lorenzo Thomas, who had arrived five days ago, five days after
Dana, to watch them both. Or so it was said at any rate, so deep was the
supposed mistrust the War Department felt. Just now though, whatever
truth there was to the rumored assignment, there was a good deal more
to watch than the unimpressive-looking department commander. First
there was the passage of the hooded and muffled warships, disappearing
northward in the direction of the bend that swung them south toward
the rebel batteries; then a long wait in the blackness; then, eastward —
across the narrow tongue of land called Vicksburg Point, beyond which
the dark loom of bluff reared up to blot out the low-hanging stars — a
sudden burgeoning incandescence, exposed as if by a rapid lifting of
the awaited curtain. The show was on. It began, so to speak, in mid-
crescendo as the guns came alive on the bluff and were replied to by
those down on the brightly lighted river, growling full-throated, jarring
the earth and water for miles around, and adding their muzzle flashes to
the vivid illumination of the scene. "Magnificent, but terrible," Grant
later called the sight. For the present, however, aside from ordering the
younger boy to bed when he heard him whimper and saw him press his
face against Wilson's chest in terror at the holocaust of flame and thun-
der, he said nothing. He merely smoked and watched the fireworks,
holding all the while to his wife's hand. After ninety minutes of uproar,
during which Dana tallied 525 shots fired by the Confederates, the bluff
was once more dark and silent except for the reflection of fires still burn-
ing fitfully on the lower level where the boats had been. How much
damage had been done and suffered, no one aboard the Magnolia could
tell, although presently it was clear that some at least of the vessels had
got past, for the Warrenton batteries came alive downstream, reproduc-
ing in miniature the earlier performance. Finally these too fell silent;
which told the watchers exactly nothing, save that the final curtain had
come down. Near and far, the fires burned out and the former black-
ness returned to the bluff and the river.
Unable to wait for word from below — news, perhaps, that
the indispensable fleet had gone out of existence — Grant went ashore,
got on his horse, and rode south under the paling stars, galloping along
the crude and pot-holed road McClernand's corps had spent the past
three weeks constructing. This was quite unlike the old Grant, who had
never seemed in a hurry about anything at all. Something had come over
him, here lately. "None who had known him the previous years could
recognize him as being the same man," one officer observed. He had
never seen the general ride at even a fast trot, let alone a gallop; but now,
he said, "[Grant's] energies seemed to burst forth with new life," with
the result that he rode at top speed practically all the time and "seemed
wrought up to the last pitch of determination and energy." Shiloh and
the long hot unproductive summer of 1862, the ill- wind fiasco near
Iuka and the fruitless victory at Corinth, the period of indecision in
The Beleaguered City [ 329 ]
Memphis and the recent seven failures above Vicksburg, all were behind
him now; he was launched at last on an all-or-nothing effort, a go-for-
broke campaign, of which the passage of the batteries by the fleet was
the first stage. If this failed, all failed; he would never get his troops
across the mile-wide Mississippi. It was no wonder he rode fast.
Near New Carthage about midday he drew rein and breathed a
sigh of relief at the sight of the fleet riding at anchor, apparently intact.
Closer inspection showed that the boats had been knocked about con-
siderably, however. All were damaged to various degrees, some in their
hulls and others in their machinery. One was missing altogether: a trans-
port, as it turned out, set afire by repeated hits and sunk to the ac-
companiment of cheers from the rebel batteries. But all the rest were
seaworthy, or soon would be, after the completion of repairs already
under way by bluejackets swarming over their ripped-up decks and
pounded bulwarks. Porter and his captains were in excellent spirits,
though they were frank to admit that last night's experience had been
little short of horrendous. For one thing, all their precautions involving
stealth and secrecy had availed them nothing. As they proceeded, dark
and silent, down the straightaway eastern shank of the hairpin bend,
Confederate sentries posted in skiffs on the river spotted them quickly;
whereupon some rowed eastward to give the alarm to the Vicksburg
cannoneers, while others, risking capture, crossed to the opposite bank,
where they set fire to prepared stacks of pitch-soaked wood, as well as
to the abandoned De Soto railroad station midway up the point. Quick-
leaping flames floodlighted the approaching Yankee gunboats and the
alerted rebel gunners promptly took these well-defined targets under
fire. Another difficulty was that the prescribed low speed left the vessels
to the mercy of the eddying current, which caught them alternately on
the bow and quarter, swinging them broadside to the stream and in
some cases even spinning them halfway around, so that they were
obliged to come full circle under the plunging fire, as if responding
to cruel encores that held them on the brightly lighted stage for further
pelting by an irate audience. Clear at last, they played a brief epilogue
at Warrenton, then swept on south to anchor above New Carthage in
the predawn darkness. Assessing damages, Porter was grateful to dis-
cover that, despite a total of 68 hits received, the transport Henry Clay
was the flotilla's only loss. Not a man had been killed, even aboard the
missing boat, and only 13 — in this case a decidedly lucky number —
had been wounded. Give him a couple of days in which to complete re-
pairs, he said, and he would be quite ready to co-operate with the army.
Grant returned to Milliken's Bend, much pleased with the out-
come, and prepared for another run within the week, this time by trans-
ports alone, in order to provide more ferries for the crossing. "If I do
not underestimate the enemy," he wrote Halleck on April 21, "my force
is abundant, with a foothold once obtained, to do the work." Next night
[330] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
six river steamers, loaded with rations, forage, and medical supplies, at-
tempted the second run under instructions "to drop noiselessly down
with the current . . . and not show steam until the enemy's batteries be-
gan firing, when the boats were to use all their legs." This was an all-
army show, the steamers being army-owned and manned by army vol-
unteers, since the civilian crews had balked at exposing their persons to
what they had watched six nights ago from a safe distance. Now as
then, Grant was there to see the show; an Illinois private later told how
he "saw standing on the upper deck of his headquarters boat a man of
iron, his wife by his side. He seemed to me the most immovable figure
I ever saw." Then came the fireworks across the way, the sudden il-
lumination and the uproar of the guns on the fuming bluff. Grant took
it calmly, the soldier recalled; "No word escaped his lips, no muscle of
his earnest face moved." Presently the batteries fell silent and word ar-
rived from below that, now as before, only a single vessel had failed to
survive the run — the steamer Tigress, McClernand's former headquar-
ters boat, which Grant had ridden to Shiloh a year ago. Loaded with
medicines and surgical equipment, she was hulled a dozen times or more
and broke in two and sank, her skeleton crew floating downstream to
safety on bits of wreckage. Once more not a man had been killed and the
wounded were only a handful. Half the steamers had their engines per-
manently smashed, but that was no real drawback, since they would
hold as many troops as ever and could be pushed or towed across the
river as barges. As Grant saw it, this second run had been quite as suc-
cessful as the first, and he was twice as pleased.
Belittling the loss of the Tigress and her cargo, which he said
amounted to nothing more than "little extras for the men," he set off
southward again on horseback to join Porter for a naval reconnaissance
of Grand Gulf, designated as the point where the army would obtain a
foothold once the navy had blasted its batteries out of existence. Porter
was experiencing misgivings, and Grant, looking the place over from
just beyond range of its guns on the 24th, saw that he had indeed given
the navy a tough nut to crack. Its batteries were sited high, as at Donel-
son and Vicksburg, and what was more they seemed altogether ready
for whatever came their way. "I foresee great difficulties in our present
position," he infprmed Sherman on his return from the exploratory
boat ride, "but it will not do to let these retard any movements." In this
connection it seemed to him there might be a chance for an assault to
succeed at last up the Yazoo, despite the previous fiasco. "It may possi-
bly happen," he wrote Sherman, "that the enemy may so weaken his
forces about Vicksburg and Haines Bluff as to make the latter vulnera-
ble, particularly with a fall of water to give you an extended landing."
However: "I leave the management of affairs at your end of the line
to you," he added by way of making it clear that he was not definitely
ordering an assault.
The Beleaguered City [ 331 ]
Monday, April 27, was Grant's forty-first birthday. It also
marked the completion of his first-stage preparations for getting his
troops across the river in order to come to grips with the rebels on dry
ground, which was what he had been after from the start. By now all
four divisions of McClernand's corps, having extended their march
southward around Bayou Vidal and Lake Saint Joseph, were at Hard
Times, Louisiana, the designated point of embarkation for the landing
at Grand Gulf, five miles downstream. One of McPherson's divisions
was also there and the other two were closing fast, while Sherman's
three remained at Young's Point, on call to follow but held in place for
the present so as to confuse the lookouts on the Vicksburg bluff. Seven
warships and seven transports were available below, and though Porter
was still troubled by misgivings — he thought his gunboats could sup-
press the Grand Gulf batteries, all right, but he warned that they might
get so knocked about in the process that they would not be able to pro-
vide adequate cover for the crossing that would follow — Grant him-
self, as usual, expressed no doubt as to the outcome. He foresaw "great
difficulties," but he did not admit that they were any occasion for delay.
All he asked of the navy was that the rebel guns be silenced, after which
there would be no need for cover. Before the anniversary was over, he
sent McClernand word to go ahead: "Commence immediately the em-
barkation of your corps, or so much of it as there is transportation for."
The showdown was unquestionably at hand; but Grant was dis-
closing nothing he could avoid disclosing until the final moment. He had,
in fact, devised three separate feints or demonstrations, two of them de-
signed to mislead the enemy as to his chosen point of attack, well down-
stream, and a third whereby he hoped not only to distract his opponent
by diverting his attention from front to rear, but also to add to his con-
fusion, throughout this critical period, by disrupting the lines of supply
and communication leading back into the interior of the state whose wel-
fare and defense were the southern commander's assigned concern.
Sherman was organically involved in two of these, one of which
had already been accomplished during the first ten days of April. Lest
Pemberton call in the troops disposed to guard against a penetration of
the Delta, and thereby strengthen the Vicksburg garrison in time for
the showdown fight now imminent, Fred Steele's division was sent a
hundred miles up the Mississippi to Greenville, where the men went
ashore and thrashed about for a week in the interior, giving the impres-
sion that they were merely the advance contingent for another major
drive on the Gibraltar of the West. Having done so — to the extreme
alarm of the local planters, who bemoaned the attendant loss of cotton,
cattle, and Negroes, and the home-guard commanders, who called
loudly for reinforcements — they got back aboard their transports and
rejoined Sherman at Young's Point for a share in the second and more
[332] THE CIVIL WAR35-1863
important feint, this time against Haines Bluff. Grant had suggested it
in his letter of the 24th, after a look at the Grand Gulf defenses, but
now on his birthday he returned to the matter in more persuasive terms.
"The effect of a heavy demonstration in that direction would be good
so far as the enemy are concerned," he wrote Sherman from Hard Times,
where McClernand's men were preparing to embark, "but I am loth to
order it, because it would be hard to make our own troops understand
that only a demonstration was intended and our people at home would
characterize it as a repulse. I therefore leave it to you whether to
make such a demonstration."
In referring thus to the probable adverse reaction by "our people
at home," who of course would get their information from the papers,
many of which were hostile — particularly toward Sherman, who re-
turned the hostility in full measure — Grant may or may not have in-
tended to use psychology on his journalist-hating friend. But at any
rate it worked. "Does General Grant think I care what the newspapers
say?" Sherman exclaimed as soon as he read the letter. And despite his
growing antipathy for the strategy his superior had evolved ("I tremble
for the result," he wrote his wife that week; "I look upon the whole
thing as one of the most hazardous and desperate moves of this or any
other war") he replied at once with a pledge of full co-operation. "We
will make as strong a demonstration as possible," he declared. "The
troops will all understand the purpose and not be hurt by the repulse.
The people of the country must find out the truth as best they can;
it is none of their business. You are engaged in a hazardous enterprise,
and for good reason wish to divert attention; that is sufficient for me,
and it shall be done." Warming as he wrote, the red-haired general
bristled with contempt for public opinion. "The men have sense, and
will trust us. As to the reports in newspapers, we must scorn them, else
they will ruin us and our country. They are as much enemies to good
government as the secesh, and between the two I like the secesh best,
because they are a brave, open enemy and not a set of sneaking, croaking
scoundrels."
Accordingly, he spent the next two days in preparation, and on
the final day of April — previously designated by Lincoln, at the request
of Congress, "as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer" be-
cause, in the words of the proclamation, the people had "forgotten God"
and become "too proud to pray" — set off up the Yazoo with ten regi-
ments from Frank Blair's division, escorted by the flotilla remnant Por-
ter had left behind, three gunboats, four tinclads, and three mortars,
under Lieutenant Commander K. R. Breese. Intent on making the
greatest possible show of strength, Sherman spread his troops over the
transport decks with orders for "every man [to] look as numerous as
possible." Short of Haines Bluff and near the scene of their December
repulse, the bluecoats went ashore; marching and countermarching, ban-
The Beleaguered City [ 333 ]
ners flying and bands playing for all they were worth in the boggy
woodland, they demonstrated in sight of the fortified line of hills, while
the gunboats closed to within point-blank range of the bluff itself. For
three hours the naval attack was pressed, as if in preparation for an in-
fantry assault. However, the defenders clearly had their backs up; nor
was there anything wrong with their marksmanship. The overaged Ty-
ler, a veteran of all the fights since Henry, retired early with a shot be-
low the water line, and the other two hauled off at 2 p.m. roughly
handled, one having taken a total of forty-six hits. Sherman might have
let it go at that, but he was determined to play out the game to full ad-
vantage. May Day morning he wrote Grant: "At 3 p.m. we will open
another cannonade to prolong the diversion, and keep it up till after
dark, when we shall drop down to Chickasaw and go on back to camp."
The other two divisions, waiting at Young's Point under Steele and
Brigadier General James M. Tuttle, were alerted for the long march to
Hard Times, while Blair was told to keep up the pretense of attack until
darkness afforded cover for withdrawal, at which time he would "let
out for home," meaning Milliken's Bend, where he was to shield the
rear of the two divisions moving southward to join Grant. Meanwhile,
Sherman told him, "I will hammer away this p.m. because Major Row-
ley, [a staff observer] now here, says that our diversion has had perfect
success, great activity being seen in Vicksburg, and troops pushing up
this way. By prolonging the effort, we give Grant more chance." The
infantry continued to mass as if for attack, and the gunboats moved
again within range of Haines Bluff, keeping up the action until 8 o'clock
that evening. Then Blair's men got back aboard their transports and
withdrew, returning to the west bank of the Mississippi, followed by
the somewhat battered but undaunted ten-boat flotilla, which dropped
anchor off the mouth of the Yazoo. Steele and Tuttle took up the march
for Hard Times at first light next morning, accompanied by Sherman
himself, who sent a courier ahead with a full account of the two-day af-
fair. Casualties had been negligible, he reported, afloat and ashore.
Whether matters had gone as well for Grant, far downriver at Grand
Gulf, he did not know; but he was satisfied that the feint from above had
held a considerable portion of the Vicksburg garrison in position north of
the city, away from the simultaneous main effort to the south. "We will
be there as soon as possible," he assured his friend and superior.
Such were the first two of the three diversions intended to con-
fuse and distract the Confederate defenders in the course of this highly
critical span of time during which Grant was preparing to launch, and
indeed was launching, his main effort a good forty miles downriver from
the bluff that was his goal. Though both appeared to have exceeded
strategic expectations, the third, while altogether different in scope and
composition, was even more successful, and in fact was referred to after-
wards by Sherman, who had no direct connection with the venture, as
[3341 THE CIVIL WAR^1863
nothing less than "the most brilliant expedition of the war." Grant was
as usual more restrained in judgment, qualifying his praise by calling
the exploit "one of the most brilliant," but he added that it would "be
handed down in history as an example to be imitated."
In point of fact, it was itself an imitation. For two years now, in
the West as in the East, the Federal cavalry had suffered from a well-
founded inferiority complex; Stuart and Morgan and Forrest had quite
literally ridden rings around the awkward blue squadrons and the armies
in their charge. Now, perhaps, the time had come for them to emulate
the example set by the exuberant gray riders. Hooker thought so, in
Virginia, and so did Grant in Mississippi. Back in February he had sug-
gested to Hurlbut, commanding in Memphis, that a cavalry force, "with
about 500 picked men, might succeed in making [its] way south and
cut the railroad east of Jackson, Miss. The undertaking would be a haz-
ardous one," he added, "but would pay well if carried out. I do not
direct that this shall be done, but leave it for a volunteer enterprise." A
month later, in mid-March, his instructions were more specific. The con-
ception had been enlarged, tripling the strength of the force to be em-
ployed, and the volunteer provision had been removed. Hurlbut was to
have all "the available cavalry put in as good condition as possible in the
next few weeks for heavy service. . . . The date when the expedition
should start will depend upon movements here. You will be informed of
the exact time for them to start." In early April the date was set and a
leader chosen: Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson, of Grant's home state of
Illinois. Hurlbut saw to it that the raiders got away on schedule, April
17, riding south out of La Grange, forty miles east of Memphis, into the
dawn that saw Porter's battered gunboats drop anchor near New Car-
thage after their fiery run past the Vicksburg bluff. "God speed him,"
Hurlbut said of Grierson, who led the 1700-man column in the direc-
tion of the Mississippi line, "for he has started gallantly on a long and
perilous ride. I shall anxiously await intelligence of the result."
The wait would necessarily be a long one. Before the raid was
over, the blue riders would have covered more than six hundred miles
of road and swamp, through hostile territory. At the outset, however,
none of the troopers in the three regiments, two from Illinois and one
from Iowa, nor of the cannoneers in the attached six-gun battery of
2-pounders, suspected that the warning order, "Oats in the nosebag and
five days rations in haversacks, the rations to last ten days," was prelude
to so deep a penetration. "We are going on a big scout to Columbus,
Mississippi, and play smash with the railroads," one predicted. Only
Grierson himself, riding at the head of the column, knew that the true
objective was Pemberton's main supply line, the Southern Railroad east
of Jackson, connecting Vicksburg with Meridian and thence with Mo-
bile and the arsenals in Georgia and the East. Pennsylvania-born and
just short of thirty-seven years of age, with a spade beard and an ac-
The Beleaguered City [ 335 ]
quired mistrust of horses dating back to a kick received from a pony in
childhood, which smashed one of his cheekbones, split his forehead, and
left him scarred for life — he had protested his assignment to the cavalry
in the first place, though to no avail; Halleck, who made the appointment,
insisted that he looked "active and wiry enough to make a good cavalry-
man" — Grierson eighteen months ago had been a music teacher and
bandmaster at Jacksonville, Illinois, but all that was left to remind him
or anyone else of that now was a jew's-harp he carried inside his blouse,
along with a pocket compass and a small-scale map of the region he
and his men would be traversing in the course of their strike at the rail-
road some two hundred air-line miles away. Riding where no bluecoat
had ever been before, he could expect to be surrounded en route by
small bodies of home guardsmen, who would outnumber him badly if
they were consolidated, as well as by sizable detachments of regulars,
horse and foot, which Pemberton would certainly send to oppose him,
front and rear, once his presence and intention became known. Even if
he succeeded in his mission — that is, reached and wrecked an appreci-
able stretch of the railroad between Jackson and Meridian, temporarily
severing the one connection by which reinforcements could reach
Vicksburg swiftly from outside Mississippi — he would then be deep
in the heart of a land where every man's hand would be raised against
him. One suggestion, included in his orders, was that he return to Ten-
nessee by swinging east, then north through Alabama; another was that
he plunge on south and west for a hookup with Grant in the vicinity of
Grand Gulf, anticipating a successful crossing by McClernand and Mc-
Pherson at that point, or else take sanctuary within Banks's outpost
lines at Baton Rouge, which would give him about as far to go from
the railroad south as he would have come already in order to reach it.
In any case, whatever escape plan he adopted as a result of the unfolding
course of events, the tactical requisites were vigilance, speed, boldness,
and deception. Without any one of these four, he and his troopers, in the
cavalry slang of the time, would be "gone up."
Across the Mississippi line by sunup, they made thirty miles the
first day — a good average march for cavalry, though Grant himself cov-
ered nearly as great a distance before noon, galloping south from Milli-
ken's Bend to check on the condition of Porter's gunboats at New
Carthage — and called a halt that night just short of Ripley, which
they passed through next morning, brushing aside the few startled gray
militia they encountered, to camp beyond New Albany at sundown.
On the third day, April 19, they continued due south through Pontotoc.
Eighty miles from base, with rebel detachments no doubt alerted in his
front and rear, Grierson began his fourth day with an inspection, culled
out 175 victims of dysentery, chills and fever, and saddle galls — "the
Quinine Brigade," the rejected troopers promptly dubbed themselves —
and sent them back, under a staff major, with one of the 2-pounders and
[336] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
instructions to "pass through Pontotoc in the night, marching by fours,
obliterating our tracks, and producing the impression that we have all
returned." He himself continued south with the main body, to Houston
and beyond. Deciding to throw a still larger tub to the Confederate
whale, he detached Colonel Edward Hatch's regiment of Iowans next
morning, along with another of the guns, and gave its commander or-
ders to strike eastward for the Mobile & Ohio, inflicting what damage
he could to that vital supply line before heading north in the wake of
the Quinine Brigade, thus spreading the scare and increasing the impres-
sion that all the raiders were returning. Hatch, a transplanted New Eng-
lander hungry for fame and advancement — tomorrow would be his
thirty-second birthday — now began a five-day adventure on his own.
Though he did not succeed in breaking the well-guarded railroad to
the east, he fought two severe skirmishes — one at the outset, a delaying
action which allowed Grierson to get away southward, the other near
the finish, which allowed his own getaway northward — burned sev-
eral cotton-stocked warehouses in Okolona, and succeeded handsomely
in his primary mission of drawing most of the North Mississippi home
guardsmen pell-mell after him and away from Grierson. At a cost of ten
men lost en route, he reported that he had inflicted ten times as many
casualties on the enemy and "accumulated 600 head of horses and mules,
with about 200 able-bodied negroes to lead them." Returning to La
Grange on Sunday morning, April 26, he brought Hurlbut the first sub-
stantial news of the raiders' progress since their departure, nine days
back.
The unavailable news was a good deal better; Grierson by then
had not only reached his objective, he was already forty hours beyond it,
having formulated and put into execution his tactics for escape. Relieved
of the threat to his rear on the 21st by Hatch's decoy action south of
Houston, he and his 1000 troopers — all Illinoisans now, including the
fifty cannoneers with the four remaining guns — rode on past Starkville,
where he detached one company for a strike at Macon, twenty-odd miles
southeast on the M&O, then took up the march at dawn and cleared
Louisville by sundown. Beyond Philadelphia on the 23d he called a halt
at nightfall, and made an early start next morning in order to reach the
Southern Railroad before noon. Preceded by scouts who seized the tele-
graph office and thus kept the alarm from being spread — "Butternut
Guerillas," these outriders called themselves, for they wore Confed-
erate uniforms, risking hanging for the advantage gained — the raiders
burst into Newton Station, a trackside hamlet twenty-five miles west of
Meridian and about twice as far east of Jackson, where they at once got
down to the work for which they had ridden all this way. Two locomo-
tives were captured and wrecked, along with three dozen freight cars
loaded with ordnance and commissary supplies, including artillery am-
munition on consignment for Vicksburg, which afforded a rackety fire-
The Beleaguered City
337
works display when set aflame. Meantime other details were ripping up
miles of track and crossties, burning trestles and bridges, tearing down
telegraph wires all the way to the Chunky River, and setting fire to a
government building stocked with 500 small arms and a quantity of
new gray uniforms. By 2 o'clock the destruction was complete;
Grierson had his bugler sound
the rally to assemble the smoke-
grimed raiders, some of whom
were showing the effects of
rebel whiskey they had "res-
cued" from the flames, then
took his accustomed post at the
head of the column and led
them away from the charred
and smoldering evidence of their
efficiency as wreckers. Now as
before, the march was south.
They did not bivouac till near
midnight, having covered a
good fifty miles of road despite
the arduous delay at Newton
Station. Next day, April 25, was
the easiest of the raid, however,
since the blue raiders spent most
of it on a plantation in the
piny highlands just short of the
Leaf River valley, resting their
mounts, gorging themselves on
smokehouse ham, and presuma-
bly nursing their hangovers.
Sunday followed, and while
Hatch was riding into La Grange at the end of his five-day excursion
through North Mississippi, the raiders turned west. In time, according to
Grierson's calculations, this would bring them either to Grand Gulf, in
case Grant had effected a crossing as planned, or to Natchez, which had
been under intermittent Federal occupation for nearly a vcar.
Either place would afford refuge for his saddle-weary troopers
if all went as he hoped and planned, but he knew well enough that the
most dangerous part of the long ride lay before him. By now, doubtless,
every grayback in the state would have learned of the presence of his
two regiments at Newton Station two days ago, with the result that a
considerable number of them must be hot on his trail or lying in wait
for him in all directions. However, this had its compensations as well as
its drawbacks. Scarcely less important than the temporary severing of
Vicksburg's main supply line was the disruption of its defenses, prevent-
[338] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
ing the hasty concentration of its outlying forces against Grant in the
early stages of his river crossing. In point of fact, Grierson was more
successful in this regard than he had any way of knowing. Orders flew
thick and fast from Pemberton's headquarters in the Mississippi capital,
directing all units within possible reach to concentrate on the capture of
the ubiquitous blue column. An infantry brigade, en route from Ala-
bama to reinforce Vicksburg, was halted at Meridian to protect that
vital intersection of the Southern Railroad and the Mobile & Ohio, while
another moved east from Jackson in the direction of the break at
Newton Station. Forces at Panola and Canton, under James Chalmers
and Lloyd Tilghman, were shifted to Okolona and Carthage to block the
northern escape route. All of these troops, amounting to no less than a
full division, not counting the various home-guard units caught up in
the swirl, were thus effectively taken out of the play and removed from
possible use at this critical time against either Grant or Grierson, who
were off in the opposite corner of the map. Not that Pemberton was
neglecting matters in that direction, at least so far as Grierson was con-
cerned. Detachments of fast-riding cavalry were ordered eastward from
Port Hudson and Port Gibson — the latter a scant half dozen miles
from Grant's intended point of landing at Grand Gulf — in case the
marauders tried for a getaway to the south or the southwest. In short,
Pemberton's reaction to the widespread confusion in his rear and along
his lines of supply and communication, while altogether commendable
from a limited point of view, amounted to full co-operation with the
raiders in the accomplishment of their secondary mission, which was to
divert his attention, as well as his reserves, away from the point at which
Grant was preparing to hurl two thirds of the blue army.
Grierson wasted no time. Monday, April 27 — Grant's birthday;
Sherman prepared for his feint up the Yazoo, and McClernand was told
to get his troops aboard the transports at Hard Times — the blue riders
pushed westward across Pearl River, aided considerably by the capture
of a ferryboat by scouts who masqueraded as Confederates. While the
crossing was in progress the company detached five days ago near
Starkville rejoined the main body, reporting that in addition to throwing
a scare into the defenders of Macon, as instructed, it had also made a
feint at Enterprise, twelve miles below Meridian, thus adding to the
difficulties of the rebel high command's attempt to pinpoint the location
of the invaders. Safely across the Pearl, the reunited 1000-man column
pressed on west to Hazlehurst, where a string of boxcars was set afire
on a siding of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad.
Flames spreading to a nearby block of buildings, the erstwhile incendi-
aries turned firemen and worked side by side with the citizens in pre-
venting the loss of the whole town. At dusk, in a driving rain which
had helped to contain the fire, the colonel ordered his troopers to re-
mount. The march was west; Grand Gulf was only forty miles away and
The Beleaguered City [ 339 ]
he hoped to make it there tomorrow, in case Grant had crossed the
Mississippi. However, morning brought no indication that any part of
the Army of the Tennessee was on this side of the river, so Grierson
veered a bit to the south for Natchez, his alternate sanctuary, which
was only twenty miles farther away than Grand Gulf. But that too was
not to be. Beyond Union Church that afternoon, the raiders were en-
joying a rest halt when they were charged by what one of them called
"a crowd of graylooking horsemen galloping and shooting in a cloud of
dust and smoke." The result at first was panic and the beginning of a
rout, but presently they stiffened and repulsed the attackers, who turned
out to be nothing more than a couple of understrength companies on
the prowl. The colonel prepared to push on next day to Natchez, but
was warned that night by one of the Butternut Guerillas, who had rid-
den ahead and struck up a conversation with a rebel outpost group, that
seven companies of cavalry from Grand Gulf were planning to ambush
him when he moved westward in the morning. So Grierson once more
changed his plans, abandoning Natchez as his destination. Determined
now to press on down to Baton Rouge, though this added another hun-
dred miles to the distance his weary men would have to ride, he turned
back east at dawn of April 29, avoiding the ambush laid so carefully in
what was now his rear.
By early afternoon they were in Brookhaven, twenty-five miles
east, astride the railroad they had crossed two days ago, twenty miles to
the north, when the march was west. "There was much running and
yelling" on the part of the startled citizens, Grierson later reported, "but
it soon quieted into almost a welcome." Here, as at Hazlehurst on Mon-
day, sparks from the burning railroad station and another string of box-
cars set a section of the town ablaze, and the troopers once more turned
firemen to help the natives keep the flames from spreading. Meantime,
however, a wrecking crew kept busy tearing up track and burning
crossties, thus abolishing the possibility of a locomotive pursuit by troops
from Jackson. Back in the saddle, the raiders moved south along the rail-
road and made camp that night, eight miles below Brookhaven and just
over a hundred miles from Baton Rouge. At Summit before sundown of
the last day of April, the colonel spared the depot lest his men have to
turn firefighters again to save the town, but there was another unfortu-
nate — or fortunate, depending on the point of view — encounter with
rebel spirits when the troopers uncovered a cache of rum in fifty-gallon
barrels. Grierson broke up the binge, got the revelers mounted at last,
drunk or sober, and pressed on south another half dozen miles before
stopping for the night. Dawn of May Day completed two full weeks the
men had spent in the saddle, with only a half day's rest aside from
the minimal halts for sleep and food. Once more the march was west.
"A straight line for Baton Rouge, and let speed be our safety," Grierson
told his officers as the column was put in motion.
[340] THE CIVIL WAR»" 1863
Speed there was — the raiders covered no less than seventy-five
miles of road in the following twenty-eight hours — but there was
fighting, too, the first and only serious opposition the main body en-
countered in the course of the long raid. Even so, it was not much.
At Wall's Bridge, which spanned the Tickfaw River just north of the
Louisiana line, three companies of Confederates from Port Hudson laid
a noonday ambush that cost the leading Union company eight casualties.
Grierson promptly brought his artillery to the front, shelled the oppo-
site bank, and ordered a charge that not only cleared the bridge but
threw the rebels into headlong flight. Riding south all night, with no
time out for rest or food, the blue column reached and crossed the
Amite River, the last unfordable stream this side of Baton Rouge, before
the aroused graybacks could bar the way. Six miles short of the Louisiana
capital next morning, his troopers reeling in their saddles from lack of
sleep, Grierson called a halt at last. The men tumbled from their mounts
and slept where they fell, along the roadside, but the colonel himself, as
befitted a former music teacher with an ingrained mistrust of horses, was
refreshing himself by playing the piano in the parlor of a nearby planta-
tion house when a picket burst in with news that they were about to be
overwhelmed and captured. A rebel force was approaching from the
west, he said, with skirmishers out! Grierson, knowing better, rode out
to meet the reported enemy, who turned out to be members of the gar-
rison at Baton Rouge, sent to investigate an improbable-sounding rumor
"that a brigade of cavalry from General Grant's army had cut their way
through the heart of the rebel country, and were then only five miles
outside the city." Somewhat restored by their naps, the men remounted
and rode into the capital that afternoon. Cheered by spectators, civilians
as well as soldiers, the two-mile-long procession of road-worn men and
animals, so weathered and dust-caked that they could scarcely be dis-
tinguished from the prisoners and Negroes they had gathered along the
way, wound slowly around the public square, then south out of town to
a grove of magnolias two miles south, where they dismounted, unsad-
dled, and fell so soundly asleep that they could not be aroused to accept
hot coffee.
They had cause for weariness, having covered more than six hun-
dred miles in less than sixteen days, and for thankfulness as well: thank-
fulness that Pemberton had lost Van Dorn to Bragg three months be-
fore, along with nearly all his cavalry, and that it was Abel Streight and
not themselves who had been made the prime concern of Bedford For-
rest. Streight had left Fort Henry on the day they left La Grange, and
was surrendering in East Alabama while Grierson's men, having caught
up on their sleep at last, were enjoying their first midday meal in the
magnolia grove just south of the Louisiana capital. Different circum-
stances might well have led to different results, including perhaps a re-
versal of their current roles as prisoners on the one hand and heroes on
The Beleaguered City [ 341 ]
the other, but the fact remained that the Illinois troopers had dealt with
conditions as they found them. And having done so, they had cause for
pride. At a total cost of barely two dozen casualties — "3 killed, 7
wounded, 5 left on the route sick . . . and 9 men missing, supposed to
have straggled" — they had "killed and wounded about one hundred
of the enemy, captured and paroled over 500 prisoners, many of them
officers, destroyed between fifty and sixty miles of railroad and tele-
graph, captured and destroyed over 3000 stand of arms, and other army
stores and government property to an immense amount." So Grierson
later reported, adding as if by afterthought, despite his continued mis-
trust of all equine creatures: "We also captured 1000 horses and mules."
Within three days the colonel was on a steamboat for New Or-
leans, where he was feted and presented with a horse by the admiring
citizenry. "My dear Alice," he wrote his wife that night, "I like Byron
have had to wake up one morning and find myself famous. Since I have
been here it has been one continuous ovation." In early June, with his pic-
ture on the covers of both Harper's Weekly and Leslie's Illustrated, he
was promoted to brigadier general. But perhaps the finest tribute of all
came from a man by no means given to using superlatives, on or off the
record. Assessing the value of the raid in its relation to the over-all cam-
paign for the taking of Vicksburg, of which it was very much a part,
Grant said flatly: "It was Grierson who first set the example of what
might be done in the interior of the enemy's country without any base
from which to draw supplies."
For the present, however, Grant at Hard Times had no more
knowledge of Grierson's progress, across the way, than Grierson had
had of Grant's while riding west from Hazlehurst. All the cavalryman
learned for certain as he pressed on toward the river was that the army
had not crossed as planned, which meant that something must have gone
awry. Something had indeed. When the raiders turned back east from
Union Church at dawn of April 29, avoiding the ambush laid in what had
been their front, they missed hearing the guns of the attackers and de-
fenders at Grand Gulf, less than thirty air-line miles away. It was just as
well, for otherwise they might have been lured into what would have
been a trap. Except for the rather negative advantage of proving that
this was no place to attempt an east-bank landing, the attack was an utter
failure, and an expensive one at that.
Porter's doubts had been increasing all week, ever since his April
2 2 reconnaissance of the stronghold on the bluff across the way. Though
he had kept up a show of confidence in his talks with Grant, privately
he was airing his misgivings in dispatches to his Washington superiors,
not only by way of preparing them for bad news, but also by way of
divesting himself in advance of any responsibility for the failure he saw
looming. "I am quite depressed with this adventure," he wrote Fox,
[342] THE CIVIL WAR»"1863
"which as you know never met with my approval." This last was some-
thing less than strictly true, though when he signaled the flotilla cap-
tains to move against Grand Gulf at 8 o'clock next morning, April 29,
his forebodings soon turned out to have been well founded. The navy's
task was to silence the rebel batteries, then cover the crossing by the
transports bringing the army over to take the place by storm; but when
four of the seven ironclads closed to within pistol shot of the 75-foot
bluff — so at least it seemed to Grant, who watched the contest from
aboard a tug — they were severely mauled. The flagship Benton took 70
hits, the Tuscumbia 81; the Lafayette took 45, the Pittsburg 35. The
other three boats, Carondelet, Mound City, and Louisville, all veterans of
the river war from its beginning, did their fighting at long range, lobbing
shells into the blufftop works, and consequently suffered little damage.
Even so, when Porter hoisted the pennant for the flotilla to drop back
out of action at 12.30 — all but the Tuscumbia, which had been struck in
her machinery and swept powerless downstream until she fetched up
short against the Louisiana bank — a total of 75 casualties, including 18
dead, had been subtracted from its crews. By contrast, although time
would disclose that they had lost 3 killed and 1 5 wounded, the defenders
seemed unhurt behind their earthwork fortifications. Grand Gulf was as
much a failure for the Union navy as Fort Donelson had been, just over
a year ago. Porter frankly admitted as much. A crossing might be man-
aged elsewhere, he told Grant, but not here, under the muzzles of those
guns across the way.
Grant had not expected a repulse, but he was prepared for what
he considered the outside chance of one. Now that a repulse had been
encountered, an alternate plan was put into execution without delay.
McClernand's men would debark at Hard Times, march south across the
point of land to De Shroon's, a plantation landing some four miles down-
stream, and be ready before dawn to get back aboard the transports,
which were to steal past Grand Gulf under cover of darkness, hugging
the western bank while the gunboats re-engaged the batteries. All this
went as planned, afloat and ashore. The navy lost only one man in its
renewal of the duel with the blufftop cannoneers, and the army made
its night march unobserved, to find the transports waiting unscathed in
the predawn darkness at De Shroon's. "By the time it was light," Grant
later wrote, "the enemy saw our whole fleet, ironclads, gunboats, river
steamers, and barges, quietly moving down the river three miles below
them, black, or rather blue, with National troops."
Accomplishing this he showed the flexibility that would charac-
terize his planning throughout the various stages of the campaign which
now was under way in earnest. Other characteristics he also showed. An
officer was to remember seeing the general sitting his horse beside the
road at a point where a narrow bridge had been thrown across a bog.
"Push right along, men," he told the marchers, speaking in almost a con-
The Beleaguered City [ 343 ]
versational tone. "Close up fast and hurry over." The soldiers recognized
him and were obviously pleased to see their commander sharing their
exertions, but the officer noted that their only reply was to do as he
directed. They did not cheer him; they just "hurried over." It was as if,
in the course of the long winter of repeated failures, they had caught his
quality of quiet confidence. Charles Dana, for one, had begun to think
so. He had come down here three weeks ago to report on Grant's al-
leged bad habits. So far, though, he not only had detected none of these;
he had never even heard him curse or seen him lose his temper. Dana was
puzzled. "His equanimity was becoming a curious spectacle to me," the
former journalist later recalled. Tonight, for example, riding beside the
general along the dark road from Hard Times to De Shroon's, he saw
Grant's horse stumble. "Now he will swear," he thought, half expecting
to see the rider go tumbling over the animal's head; "For an instant his
moral status was on trial." But Grant lost neither his balance nor his
temper. "Pulling up his horse, he rode on, and, to my utter amazement,
without a word or sign of impatience."
Nor did the night march across the point of land, from Hard
Times to De Shroon's, put an end to the need for sudden improvisation.
Having bypassed Grand Gulf — which he could not allow to remain
alive for long, so close in his rear — Grant still was faced with the
problem of where to effect a landing on the Mississippi bank, in order to
return for a strike at the fortified bluff from its vulnerable landward
flank. A look at the map suggested Rodney, another twelve miles down-
stream. But that would not only give the troops a considerable distance
to march, and the defenders time to improve their position and call in
reinforcements, it would also place the bluecoats on the far side of Bayou
Pierre, which would have to be crossed when they turned back north.
Yet to make a landing short of the point where the bayou flowed west-
ward into the river, five miles below, might be to founder the army in
some unmapped and unsuspected swamp. What was needed was a guide,
a sympathetic native of the region, and Grant sent a detachment of sol-
diers across the river in a skiff, with instructions to bring back wiiat he
wanted. They returned before midnight with an east-bank slave who
filled the bill. At first he had been unwilling to come, and in fact had had
to be taken by force, but now that he found himself in the lamp-lighted
headquarters tent, facing the Union commander across an unrolled chart,
he turned co-operative. "Look here," Grant said. "Tell me where this
road leads to — starting where you see my finger here on the map and
running down that way." The Negro studied the problem, then shook
his head. "That road fetches up at Bayou Pierre," he said. "But you can't
go that way, 'cause it's plum full of backwater." The thing to do, he re-
plied to further questions, was to go ashore at Bruinsburg, six miles be-
low De Shroon's. This would still be south of Bayou Pierre, but at least
it was only half as far as Rodney. Moreover, there was a good road
[344] THE CIVIL WAR^1863
leading from there to Grand Gulf by way of Port Gibson, which lay ten
miles inland, well back from the trackless swamps and canebrakes of the
river bottoms. At Bruinsburg, the captive slave explained, "you can
leave the boats and the men can walk on high ground all the way. The
best houses and plantations in all the country are there, sir, 
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